Top dense hyperbolic ball packings and coverings for complete Coxeter orthoscheme groups

TL;DR

This paper investigates the densest and loosest arrangements of congruent balls in hyperbolic 3-space, focusing on periodic packings and coverings related to Coxeter orthoschemes, with conjectures on optimal densities.

Contribution

It introduces new extremal configurations for classical ball packings and coverings in hyperbolic space using Coxeter orthoscheme groups, providing bounds and conjectures.

Findings

Proposes conjectured densest packing density of 0.77147.

Suggests conjectured loosest covering density of 1.36893.

Links configurations to hyperbolic football manifolds and crystallography.

Abstract

In $n$-dimensional hyperbolic space $\mathbf{H}^n$ $(n\ge2)$ there are $3$-types of spheres (balls): the sphere, horosphere and hypersphere. If $n=2,3$ we know an universal upper bound of the ball packing densities, where each ball volume is related to the volume of the corresponding Dirichlet-Voronoi (D-V) cell. E.g. in $\mathbf{H}^3$ the densest horoball packing is derived from the $\{3,3,6\}$ Coxeter tiling consisting of ideal regular simplices $T_{reg}^\infty$ with dihedral angles $\frac{\pi}{3}$. The density of this packing is $\delta_3^\infty\approx 0.85328$ and this provides a very rough upper bound for the ball packing densities as well. However, there are no "essential" results regarding the "classical" ball packings with congruent balls, and for ball coverings either. The goal of this paper to find the extremal ball arrangements in $\mathbf{H}^3$ with "classical balls". We consider only periodic congruent ball arrangements (for simplicity) related to the generalized, so-called {\it complete Coxeter orthoschemes} and their extended groups. In Theorems 1.1-1.2 we formulate also conjectures for the densest ball packing with density $0.77147\dots$ and the loosest ball covering with density $1.36893\dots$, respectively. Both are related with the extended Coxeter group $(5, 3, 5)$ and the so-called hyperbolic football manifold (look at Fig.~3). These facts can have important relations with fullerens in crystallography.