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Lattice packing of spheres and the Wulff-Shape
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
Abstract
The shape of large densest sphere packings in a lattice L ⊂ Ed (d ≥ 2), measured by parametric density, tends asymptotically not to a sphere but to a polytope, the Wulff-shape, which depends only on L and the parameter. This is proved via the density deviation, derived from parametric density and diophantine approximation. In crystallography the Wulff-shape describes the shape of ideal crystals. So the result further indicates that the shape of ideal crystals can be described by dense lattice packings of spheres in E3.
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- Copyright © University College London 1996
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