The structure of rectangle families dividing the plane into maximum number of atoms (Q801060)

Given n boxes (closed planar rectangles parallel to the coordinate axes) their union set can be decomposed into its atoms, two points being in the same atoms just in case they are exactly in the same boxes. In previous work, the authors have shown that the number of atoms is at most \(2n^ 2-6n+7\) for \(n\geq 2\). Here a complete description is given for the extreme families, from which it is reduced that the number of essentially different extreme families is \(\left( \begin{matrix} 5\cdot 2^{n-3}+1\\ 2\end{matrix} \right)\) for \(n\geq 4\). These families with only connected atoms are also classified.