Sphere packing

In geometry, a sphere packing is an arrangement of non-

overlapping spheres within a containing space. The spheres
considered are usually all of identical size, and the space is usually
three-dimensional Euclidean space. However, sphere packing
problems can be generalised to consider unequal spheres, spaces
of other dimensions (where the problem becomes circle packing in
two dimensions, or hypersphere packing in higher dimensions) or
to non-Euclidean spaces such as hyperbolic space.

A typical sphere packing problem is to find an arrangement in Sphere packing finds practical
which the spheres fill as much of the space as possible. The application in the stacking of
cannonballs.
proportion of space filled by the spheres is called the packing
density of the arrangement. As the local density of a packing in an
infinite space can vary depending on the volume over which it is measured, the problem is usually to
maximise the average or asymptotic density, measured over a large enough volume.

For equal spheres in three dimensions, the densest packing uses approximately 74% of the volume. A
random packing of equal spheres generally has a density around 63.5%.[1]

Classification and terminology

A lattice arrangement (commonly called a regular arrangement) is one in which the centers of the
spheres form a very symmetric pattern which needs only n vectors to be uniquely defined (in n-
dimensional Euclidean space). Lattice arrangements are periodic. Arrangements in which the spheres do
not form a lattice (often referred to as irregular) can still be periodic, but also aperiodic (properly
speaking non-periodic) or random. Because of their high degree of symmetry, lattice packings are easier
to classify than non-lattice ones. Periodic lattices always have well-defined densities.

Regular packing

Dense packing
In three-dimensional Euclidean space, the densest packing of equal spheres is achieved by a family of
structures called close-packed structures. One method for generating such a structure is as follows.
Consider a plane with a compact arrangement of spheres on it. Call it A. For any three neighbouring
spheres, a fourth sphere can be placed on top in the hollow between the three bottom spheres. If we do
this for half of the holes in a second plane above the first, we create a new compact layer. There are two
possible choices for doing this, call them B and C. Suppose that we chose B. Then one half of the hollows
of B lies above the centers of the balls in A and one half lies above the hollows of A which were not used
for B. Thus the balls of a third layer can be placed either directly
above the balls of the first one, yielding a layer of type A, or above
the holes of the first layer which were not occupied by the second
layer, yielding a layer of type C. Combining layers of types A, B,
and C produces various close-packed structures.

Two simple arrangements within the close-packed family

correspond to regular lattices. One is called cubic close packing Regular arrangement of equal
(or face-centred cubic, "FCC")—where the layers are alternated in spheres in a plane changing to an
the ABCABC... sequence. The other is called hexagonal close irregular arrangement of unequal
packing ("HCP"), where the layers are alternated in the ABAB... spheres (bubbles).
sequence. But many layer stacking sequences are possible
(ABAC, ABCBA, ABCBAC, etc.), and still generate a close-
packed structure. In all of these arrangements each sphere touches 12
neighboring spheres,[2] and the average density is

In 1611, Johannes Kepler conjectured that this is the maximum possible

density amongst both regular and irregular arrangements—this became
known as the Kepler conjecture. Carl Friedrich Gauss proved in 1831 that
these packings have the highest density amongst all possible lattice
packings.[3] In 1998, Thomas Callister Hales, following the approach
suggested by László Fejes Tóth in 1953, announced a proof of the Kepler
conjecture. Hales' proof is a proof by exhaustion involving checking of
many individual cases using complex computer calculations. Referees said
that they were "99% certain" of the correctness of Hales' proof. On 10
August 2014, Hales announced the completion of a formal proof using
automated proof checking, removing any doubt.[4]
HCP lattice (left) and the
FCC lattice (right) are the
two most common highest
Other common lattice packings
density arrangements.
Some other lattice packings are often found in physical systems. These
include the cubic lattice with a density of , the hexagonal

lattice with a density of and the tetrahedral lattice with a

density of .[5]

Two ways to stack three

Jammed packings with a low density
planes made of spheres
Packings where all spheres are constrained by their neighbours to stay in
one location are called rigid or jammed. The strictly jammed (mechanically
stable even as a finite system) regular sphere packing with the lowest known density is a diluted
("tunneled") fcc crystal with a density of only π√ 2 /9 ≈ 0.49365.[6] The loosest known regular jammed
packing has a density of approximately 0.0555.[7]
Irregular packing
If we attempt to build a densely packed collection of spheres, we will be tempted to always place the next
sphere in a hollow between three packed spheres. If five spheres are assembled in this way, they will be
consistent with one of the regularly packed arrangements described above. However, the sixth sphere
placed in this way will render the structure inconsistent with any regular arrangement. This results in the
possibility of a random close packing of spheres which is stable against compression.[8] Vibration of a
random loose packing can result in the arrangement of spherical particles into regular packings, a process
known as granular crystallisation. Such processes depend on the geometry of the container holding the
spherical grains.[2]

When spheres are randomly added to a container and then compressed, they will generally form what is
known as an "irregular" or "jammed" packing configuration when they can be compressed no more. This
irregular packing will generally have a density of about 64%. Recent research predicts analytically that it
cannot exceed a density limit of 63.4%[9] This situation is unlike the case of one or two dimensions,
where compressing a collection of 1-dimensional or 2-dimensional spheres (that is, line segments or
circles) will yield a regular packing.

Hypersphere packing
The sphere packing problem is the three-dimensional version of a class of ball-packing problems in
arbitrary dimensions. In two dimensions, the equivalent problem is packing circles on a plane. In one
dimension it is packing line segments into a linear universe.[10]

In dimensions higher than three, the densest lattice packings of hyperspheres are known up to 8
dimensions.[11] Very little is known about irregular hypersphere packings; it is possible that in some
dimensions the densest packing may be irregular. Some support for this conjecture comes from the fact
that in certain dimensions (e.g. 10) the densest known irregular packing is denser than the densest known
regular packing.[12]

In 2016, Maryna Viazovska announced a proof that the E8 lattice provides the optimal packing
(regardless of regularity) in eight-dimensional space,[13] and soon afterwards she and a group of
collaborators announced a similar proof that the Leech lattice is optimal in 24 dimensions.[14] This result
built on and improved previous methods which showed that these two lattices are very close to
optimal.[15] The new proofs involve using the Laplace transform of a carefully chosen modular function
to construct a radially symmetric function f such that f and its Fourier transform f̂ both equal 1 at the
origin, and both vanish at all other points of the optimal lattice, with f negative outside the central sphere
of the packing and f̂ positive. Then, the Poisson summation formula for f is used to compare the density
of the optimal lattice with that of any other packing.[16] Before the proof had been formally refereed and
published, mathematician Peter Sarnak called the proof "stunningly simple" and wrote that "You just start
reading the paper and you know this is correct."[17]

Another line of research in high dimensions is trying to find asymptotic bounds for the density of the
densest packings. It is known that for large n, the densest lattice in dimension n has density between
cn ⋅ 2−n (for some constant c) and 2−(0.599+o(1))n.[18] Conjectural bounds lie in between.[19] In a 2023
preprint, Marcelo Campos, Matthew Jenssen, Marcus Michelen and Julian Sahasrabudhe improved the
lower bound of the maximal density to ,[20][21] among their techniques they

make use of the Rödl nibble.

Unequal sphere packing

Many problems in the chemical and physical sciences can be
related to packing problems where more than one size of sphere is
available. Here there is a choice between separating the spheres
into regions of close-packed equal spheres, or combining the
multiple sizes of spheres into a compound or interstitial packing.
When many sizes of spheres (or a distribution) are available, the
problem quickly becomes intractable, but some studies of binary
hard spheres (two sizes) are available.

When the second sphere is much smaller than the first, it is

possible to arrange the large spheres in a close-packed
arrangement, and then arrange the small spheres within the A dense packing of spheres with a
octahedral and tetrahedral gaps. The density of this interstitial radius ratio of 0.64799 and a density
packing depends sensitively on the radius ratio, but in the limit of of 0.74786[22]
extreme size ratios, the smaller spheres can fill the gaps with the
same density as the larger spheres filled space.[23] Even if the
large spheres are not in a close-packed arrangement, it is always possible to insert some smaller spheres
of up to 0.29099 of the radius of the larger sphere.[24]

When the smaller sphere has a radius greater than 0.41421 of the radius of the larger sphere, it is no
longer possible to fit into even the octahedral holes of the close-packed structure. Thus, beyond this point,
either the host structure must expand to accommodate the interstitials (which compromises the overall
density), or rearrange into a more complex crystalline compound structure. Structures are known which
exceed the close packing density for radius ratios up to 0.659786.[22][25]

Upper bounds for the density that can be obtained in such binary packings have also been obtained.[26]

In many chemical situations such as ionic crystals, the stoichiometry is constrained by the charges of the
constituent ions. This additional constraint on the packing, together with the need to minimize the
Coulomb energy of interacting charges leads to a diversity of optimal packing arrangements.

The upper bound for the density of a strictly jammed sphere packing with any set of radii is 1 – an
example of such a packing of spheres is the Apollonian sphere packing. The lower bound for such a
sphere packing is 0 – an example is the Dionysian sphere packing.[27]
Hyperbolic space
Although the concept of circles and spheres can be extended to hyperbolic space, finding the densest
packing becomes much more difficult. In a hyperbolic space there is no limit to the number of spheres
that can surround another sphere (for example, Ford circles can be thought of as an arrangement of
identical hyperbolic circles in which each circle is surrounded by an infinite number of other circles). The
concept of average density also becomes much more difficult to define accurately. The densest packings
in any hyperbolic space are almost always irregular.[28]

Despite this difficulty, K. Böröczky gives a universal upper bound for the density of sphere packings of
hyperbolic n-space where n ≥ 2.[29] In three dimensions the Böröczky bound is approximately
85.327613%, and is realized by the horosphere packing of the order-6 tetrahedral honeycomb with
Schläfli symbol {3,3,6}.[30] In addition to this configuration at least three other horosphere packings are
known to exist in hyperbolic 3-space that realize the density upper bound.[31]

Touching pairs, triplets, and quadruples

The contact graph of an arbitrary finite packing of unit balls is the graph whose vertices correspond to the
packing elements and whose two vertices are connected by an edge if the corresponding two packing
elements touch each other. The cardinality of the edge set of the contact graph gives the number of
touching pairs, the number of 3-cycles in the contact graph gives the number of touching triplets, and the
number of tetrahedrons in the contact graph gives the number of touching quadruples (in general for a
contact graph associated with a sphere packing in n dimensions that the cardinality of the set of n-
simplices in the contact graph gives the number of touching (n + 1)-tuples in the sphere packing). In the
case of 3-dimensional Euclidean space, non-trivial upper bounds on the number of touching pairs,
triplets, and quadruples[32] were proved by Karoly Bezdek and Samuel Reid at the University of Calgary.

The problem of finding the arrangement of n identical spheres that maximizes the number of contact
points between the spheres is known as the "sticky-sphere problem". The maximum is known for n ≤ 11,
and only conjectural values are known for larger n.[33]

Other spaces
Sphere packing on the corners of a hypercube (with Hamming balls, spheres defined by Hamming
distance) corresponds to designing error-correcting codes: if the spheres have radius t, then their centers
are codewords of a (2t + 1)-error-correcting code. Lattice packings correspond to linear codes. There are
other, subtler relationships between Euclidean sphere packing and error-correcting codes. For example,
the binary Golay code is closely related to the 24-dimensional Leech lattice.

For further details on these connections, see the book Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups by Conway
and Sloane.[34]
See also
Close-packing of equal spheres
Apollonian sphere packing
Finite sphere packing
Hermite constant
Inscribed sphere
Kissing number
Sphere-packing bound
Random close pack
Cylinder sphere packing
Sphere packing in a sphere

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Bibliography
Aste, T.; Weaire, D. (2000). The Pursuit of Perfect Packing. London: Institute of Physics
Publishing. ISBN 0-7503-0648-3.
Conway, J. H.; Sloane, N. J. H. (1998). Sphere Packings, Lattices and Groups (https://archiv
e.org/details/spherepackingsla0000conw_b8u0) (3rd ed.). Springer. ISBN 0-387-98585-9.
Sloane, N. J. A. (1984). "The Packing of Spheres". Scientific American. 250: 116–125.
Bibcode:1984SciAm.250e.116G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984SciAm.250e.116
G). doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0584-116 (https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fscientificamerican0
584-116).

External links
Dana Mackenzie (May 2002) "A fine mess" (http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/radin/reviews/n
ewscientist2.html) (New Scientist)

A non-technical overview of packing in hyperbolic space.

Weisstein, Eric W. "Circle Packing" (https://mathworld.wolfram.com/CirclePacking.html).

MathWorld.
"Kugelpackungen (Sphere Packing)" (http://www.3doro.de/e-kp.htm) (T. E. Dorozinski)
"3D Sphere Packing Applet" (http://alecjacobson.com/graphics/hw10b/) Archived (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20090426114733/http://alecjacobson.com/graphics/hw10b/) 26 April 2009
at the Wayback Machine Sphere Packing java applet
"Densest Packing of spheres into a sphere" (http://www.randomwalk.de/sphere/insphr/spher
esinsphr.html) java applet
"Database of sphere packings" (http://codes.se/packings/) (Erik Agrell)

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