Apollonian ball packings and stacked polytopes (Q309645)

The relation between Apollonian packings of \(d\)-dimensional balls, their tangency graphs, and stacked polytopes is studied. For \(d=2\) it is quite easy to prove that the graph \(G\) is a tangent graph of an Apollonian circle packing if and only if it is the 1-skeleton of some 3-dimensional stacked polytope. For \(d=3\) it is proved that the 1-skeleton of a stacked 4-polytope is a tangency graph of an Apollonian 3-balls packing if and only if it does not contain six 4-cliques sharing a 3-clique. On the other hand, for \(d=3\) the tangency graph of an Apollonian 3-balls may not be the 1-skeleton of any stacked 4-polytope. But it is proved that this situation never occurs if \(d\geq 4\).