Upper bound on the packing density of regular tetrahedra and octahedra

DOI10.1007/S00454-010-9304-XMaRDI QIDQ650113zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Simon Gravel, Veit Elser, Yoav Kallus

Publication date 25 November 2011

Published in Discrete \& Computational Geometry (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1008.2830

zbMATH Keywords

packingtetrahedronupper boundHilbert problemoctahedronregular solid

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Packing and covering in (n) dimensions (aspects of discrete geometry) (52C17)

Abstract: We obtain an upper bound to the packing density of regular tetrahedra. The bound is obtained by showing the existence, in any packing of regular tetrahedra, of a set of disjoint spheres centered on tetrahedron edges, so that each sphere is not fully covered by the packing. The bound on the amount of space that is not covered in each sphere is obtained in a recursive way by building on the observation that non-overlapping regular tetrahedra cannot subtend a solid angle of $4pi$ around a point if this point lies on a tetrahedron edge. The proof can be readily modified to apply to other polyhedra with the same property. The resulting lower bound on the fraction of empty space in a packing of regular tetrahedra is $2.6ldotsimes10^{-25}$ and reaches $1.4ldotsimes10^{-12}$ for regular octahedra.

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Cites work

• A dense packing of regular tetrahedra
• A proof of the Kepler conjecture
• A revision of the proof of the Kepler conjecture
• Dense crystalline dimer packings of regular tetrahedra
• Dense packing of space with various convex solids
• Dense periodic packings of tetrahedra with small repeating units
• Packing, tiling, and covering with tetrahedra
• The densest lattice packing of tetrahedra
• Which Tetrahedra Fill Space?

Cited in

(14)

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• Dense crystalline dimer packings of regular tetrahedra
• Lower Bounds on Lattice Covering Densities of Simplices
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 6139732 (Why is no real title available?)
• Packing, tiling, and covering with tetrahedra
• New upper bounds for the density of translative packings of three-dimensional convex bodies with tetrahedral symmetry
• Three-dimensional packing of perfect tetrahedra
• New family of tilings of three-dimensional Euclidean space by tetrahedra and octahedra
• Upper bounds on packing density for circular cylinders with high aspect ratio
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5530163 (Why is no real title available?)
• The local optimality of the double lattice packing
• The packing density of the \(n\)-dimensional cross-polytope
• Mysteries in Packing Regular Tetrahedra
• On the translative packing densities of tetrahedra and cuboctahedra

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• kepler98

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