Mean-field approach to Random Apollonian Packing

The method, proposed in \cite{Za22} to derive the densest packing fraction of random disc and sphere packings, is shown to yield in two dimensions too high a value that (i) violates the very assumption underlying the method and (ii) corresponds to a high degree of structural order. The claim that the obtained value is supported by a specific simulation is shown to be unfounded. One source of the error is pointed out.

We reveal the fractal nature of patterns arising in random sequential adsorption of particles with continuum power-law size distribution, $P(R)\sim R^{\alpha-1}$, $R \le R_{\rm max}$. We find that the patterns become more and more ordered as $\alpha$ increases, and that the Apollonian packing is obtained at $\alpha \to \infty $ limit. We introduce the entropy production rate as a quantitative criteria of regularity and observe a transition from an irregular regime of the patt...

Hard spheres are ubiquitous in condensed matter: they have been used as models for liquids, crystals, colloidal systems, granular systems, and powders. Packings of hard spheres are of even wider interest, as they are related to important problems in information theory, such as digitalization of signals, error correcting codes, and optimization problems. In three dimensions the densest packing of identical hard spheres has been proven to be the FCC lattice, and it is conjectur...

The densest amorphous packing of rigid particles is known as random close packing. It has long been appreciated that higher densities are achieved by using collections of particles with a variety of sizes. The variety of sizes is often quantified by the polydispersity of the particle size distribution: the standard deviation of the radius divided by the mean radius. Several prior studies quantified the increase of the packing density as a function of polydispersity. Of course...

A recent letter titled "Explicit Analytical Solution for Random Close Packing in d=2 and d=3" published in Physical Review Letters proposes a first-principle computation of the random close packing (RCP) density in spatial dimensions d=2 and d=3. This problem has a long history of such proposals, but none capture the full picture. This paper, in particular, once generalized to all d fails to describe the known behavior of jammed systems in d>4, thus suggesting that the low-di...

A disordered solid, such as an athermal jammed packing of soft spheres, exists in a rugged potential-energy landscape in which there are a myriad of stable configurations that defy easy enumeration and characterization. Nevertheless, in three-dimensional monodisperse particle packings, we demonstrate an astonishing regularity in the distribution of basin volumes. The probability of landing randomly in a basin is proportional to its volume. Ordering the basins according to the...

We apply a recent one-dimensional algorithm for predicting random close packing fractions of polydisperse hard spheres [Farr and Groot, J. Chem. Phys. 133, 244104 (2009)] to the case of lognormal distributions of sphere sizes and mixtures of such populations. We show that the results compare well to two much slower algorithms for directly simulating spheres in three dimensions, and show that the algorithm is fast enough to tackle inverse problems in particle packing: designin...

We develop a model to describe the properties of random assemblies of polydisperse hard spheres. We show that the key features to describe the system are (i) the dependence between the free volume of a sphere and the various coordination numbers between the species, and (ii) the dependence of the coordination numbers with the concentration of species; quantities that are calculated analytically. The model predicts the density of random close packing and random loose packing o...

The network of contacts in space-filling disk packings, such as the Apollonian packing, are examined. These networks provide an interesting example of spatial scale-free networks, where the topology reflects the broad distribution of disk areas. A wide variety of topological and spatial properties of these systems are characterized. Their potential as models for networks of connected minima on energy landscapes is discussed.

We review results about the density of typical lattices in $R^n.$ They state that such density is of the order of $2^{-n}.$ We then obtain similar results for random packings in $R^n$: after taking suitably a fraction $\nu$ of a typical random packing $\sigma$, the resulting packing $\tau$ has density $C(\nu) 2^{-n},$ with a reasonable $C(\nu).$ We obtain estimates on $C(\nu).$