Ball Packings with Periodic Constraints

Abstract

We call a periodic ball packing in d-dimensional Euclidean space periodically (resp. strictly) jammed with respect to a period lattice Λ if there are no nontrivial motions of the balls that preserve Λ (resp. that maintain some period with smaller or equal volume). In particular, we call a packing consistently periodically jammed (resp. consistently strictly jammed) if it is periodically (resp. strictly) jammed on every one of its periods. After extending a well-known bar framework and stress condition to strict jamming, we prove that a packing with period Λ is consistently strictly jammed if and only if it is strictly jammed with respect to Λ and consistently periodically jammed. We next extend a result about rigid unit mode spectra in crystallography to characterize periodic jamming on sublattices. After that, we prove that there are finitely many strictly jammed packings of m unit balls and other similar results. An interesting example shows that the size of the first sublattice on which a packing is first periodically unjammed is not bounded. Finally, we find an example of a consistently periodically jammed packing of low density δ=4π/6√3+11+ε≈0.59, where ε is an arbitrarily small positive number. Throughout the paper, the statements for the closely related notions of periodic infinitesimal rigidity and affine infinitesimal rigidity for tensegrity frameworks are also given.