The Honeycomb Conjecture

We prove that the planar hexagonal honeycomb is asymptotically optimal for a large class of optimal partition problems, in which the cells are assumed to be convex, and the criterion is to minimize either the sum or the maximum among the energies of the cells, the cost being a shape functional $F$ which satisfies a few assumptions. They are: monotonicity under inclusions; homogeneity under dilations; a Faber-Krahn inequality for convex hexagons; a convexity-type inequality fo...

This paper views the honeycomb conjecture and the Kepler problem essentially as extreme value problems and solves them by partitioning 2-space and 3-space into building blocks and determining those blocks that have the universal extreme values that one needs. More precisely, we proved two results. First, we proved that the regular hexagons are the only 2-dim blocks that have unit area and the least perimeter (or contain a unit circle and have the least area) that tile the pla...

The Honeycomb Conjecture states that among tilings with unit area cells in the Euclidean plane, the average perimeter of a cell is minimal for a regular hexagonal tiling. This conjecture was proved by L. Fejes T\'oth for convex tilings, and by Hales for not necessarily convex tilings. In this paper we investigate the same question for tilings of a given normed plane, and show that among normal, convex tilings in a normed plane, the average squared perimeter of a cell is minim...

We provide upper and lower bounds on the least-perimeter way to enclose and separate n regions of equal area in the plane. Along the way, inside the hexagonal honeycomb, we provide minimizers for each n .

The honeycomb problem on the sphere asks for the perimeter-minimizing partition of the sphere into N equal areas. This article solves the problem when N=12. The unique minimizer is a tiling of 12 regular pentagons in the dodecahedral arrangement.

We address the question: Given a positive integer $N$, can any 2D convex polygonal region be partitioned into $N$ convex pieces such that all pieces have the same area and same perimeter? The answer to this question is easily `yes' for $N$=2. We prove the answer to be `yes' for $N$=4 and also discuss higher powers of 2.

Several commonly observed physical and biological systems are arranged in shapes that closely resemble an honeycomb cluster, that is, a tessellation of the plane by regular hexagons. Although these shapes are not always the direct product of energy minimization, they can still be understood, at least phenomenologically, as low-energy configurations. In this paper, explicit quantitative estimates on the geometry of such low-energy configurations are provided, showing in partic...

We prove that, in the limit as $k \to+ \infty$, the hexagonal honeycomb solves the optimal partition problem in which the criterion is minimizing the largest among the Cheeger constants of $k$ mutually disjoint cells in a planar domain. As a by-product, the same result holds true when the Cheeger constant is replaced by the first Robin eigenvalue of the Laplacian.

We briefly introduce several problems: (1) a generalization of the convex fair partition conjecture, (2) on non-trivial invariants among polyhedrons that can be formed from the same set of face polygons, (3) two questions on assembling rectangular tiles to form larger rectangles and (4) on convex regions which maximize and minimize the diameter for specified area and perimeter. For each question, we discuss partial solutions and indicate aspects that to our knowledge, await e...

We prove a sharp quantitative version of Hales' isoperimetric honeycomb theorem by exploiting a quantitative isoperimetric inequality for polygons and an improved convergence theorem for planar bubble clusters. Further applications include the description of isoperimetric tilings of the torus with respect to almost unit-area constraints or with respect to almost flat Riemannian metrics.