On packing density of growing size circles (Q508635)

In the present note, the author studies a packing of the plane using a growing size arrangement of circles. His construction goes as follows. First, one circumscribes the unit circle with \(n\) circles of the same radius \(r_{n,1}\) such that they also touch both neighbours. This leads to the first zone \(Z_{n,1}\). Then one draws \(n\) circles of the same radius \(r_{n,2}\) such that they touch two circles from \(Z_{n,1}\) and also their neighbours with the radius \(r_{n,2}\). This leads to the second zone \(Z_{n,2}\), and we can continue this procedure further. Now we define \[ S_{n,k}= \bigcup_{i=1}^{k} Z_{n,i}, \] and \[ S_{n} = \bigcup_{k=1}^{\infty}S_{n,k}. \] Then \(S_{n}\) is a packing of the plane, an infinite set of circles with pairwise disjoint interiors, and a natural problem is to find the fraction of the plane filled by the circle making up this packing. In order to measure a given packing, it is natural to look at the packing density of an arrangement. Denote by \(P_{n,k}\) the regular \(n\)-gon with vertices at the centers of circles from \(Z_{n,k}\), and let us define \[ \delta_{n,k} = \frac{ | S_{n,k} \cap P_{n,k}|}{|P_{n,k}|}. \] Then \[ \delta_{n} = \lim_{k \rightarrow \infty} \delta_{n,k} \] is the packing density of \(S_{n}\), and \[ \delta^{*} = \lim_{n\rightarrow \infty} \delta_{n} \] is the main object of our interests. The main result of the note tells us that for author's packing given by growing size circles, one has \[ \delta^{*} = \frac{\pi}{2\sqrt{3}}. \] It is worth pointing out that the value of \(\delta^{*}\) coincides, in the asymptotical sense, with the density of the classical hexagonal circle packing.