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Unpublished Paper
Packing Squares in a Torus
Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (2012)
  • D. W. Blair
  • Christian Santangelo
  • J. Machta
Abstract

The densest packings of N unit squares in a torus are studied using analytical methods as well as simulated annealing. A rich array of dense packing solutions are found: density-one packings when N is the sum of two square integers; a family of 'gapped bricklayer' Bravais lattice solutions with density N/(N + 1); and some surprising non-Bravais lattice configurations, including lattices of holes as well as a configuration for N = 23 in which not all squares share the same orientation. The entropy of some of these configurations and the frequency and orientation of density-one solutions as N -> infinity are discussed.

Disciplines
Publication Date
2012
Comments
Prepublished version downloaded from ArXiv. Published version is located at http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-5468/2012/01/P01018/
Citation Information
D. W. Blair, Christian Santangelo and J. Machta. "Packing Squares in a Torus" Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/christian_santangelo/24/