Generating dense packings of hard spheres by soft interaction design

Packing spheres efficiently in large dimension $d$ is a particularly difficult optimization problem. In this paper we add an isotropic interaction potential to the pure hard-core repulsion, and show that one can tune it in order to maximize a lower bound on packing density. Our results suggest th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Thibaud Maimbourg, Mauro Sellitto, Guilhem Semerjian, Francesco Zamponi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SciPost 2018-06-01
Series:SciPost Physics
Online Access:https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.4.6.039
Description
Summary:Packing spheres efficiently in large dimension $d$ is a particularly difficult optimization problem. In this paper we add an isotropic interaction potential to the pure hard-core repulsion, and show that one can tune it in order to maximize a lower bound on packing density. Our results suggest that exponentially many (in the number of particles) distinct disordered sphere packings can be effectively constructed by this method, up to a packing fraction close to $7\, d\, 2^{-d}$. The latter is determined by solving the inverse problem of maximizing the dynamical glass transition over the space of the interaction potentials. Our method crucially exploits a recent exact formulation of the thermodynamics and the dynamics of simple liquids in infinite dimension.
ISSN:2542-4653