Dense periodic packings of tori

Abstract

Dense packings of nonoverlapping bodies in three-dimensional Euclidean space R3 are useful models of the structure of a variety of many-particle systems that arise in the physical and biological sciences. Here we investigate the packing behavior of congruent ring tori in R3, which are multiply connected nonconvex bodies of genus 1, as well as horn and spindle tori. Specifically, we analytically construct a family of dense periodic packings of unlinked tori guided by the organizing principles originally devised for simply connected solid bodies [Torquato and Jiao, Phys. Rev. E 86, 011102 (2012)]. We find that the horn tori as well as certain spindle and ring tori can achieve a packing density not only higher than that of spheres (i.e., π/√18=0.7404...) but also higher than the densest known ellipsoid packings (i.e., 0.7707...). In addition, we study dense packings of clusters of pair-linked ring tori (i.e., Hopf links), which can possess much higher densities than corresponding packings consisting of unlinked tori.