On limits of dense packing of equal spheres in a cube (Q2256132)

Summary: We examine packing of \(n\) congruent spheres in a cube when \(n\) is~close but less than the number of spheres in a regular cubic close-packed~(ccp) arrangement of \(\lceil p^{3}/2\rceil\) spheres. For this family~of packings, the previous best-known arrangements were usually derived~from a ccp by omission of a certain number of spheres without changing~the initial structure. In this paper, we show that better arrangements~exist for all \(n\leq\lceil p^{3}/2\rceil-2\). We introduce an optimization~method to reveal improvements of these packings, and present many~new improvements for \(n\leqslant 4629\).