Sphere Packings, IV. Detailed Bounds

Abstract

This paper is the fourth in a series of six papers devoted to the proof of theKepler conjecture, which asserts that no packing of congruent balls in three dimensions has density greater than the face-centered cubic packing. In a previous paper in this series, a continuous function f on a compact spacewas defined, certain points in the domain were conjectured to give the global maxima, and the relation between this conjecture and the Kepler conjecture was established. The function f can be expressed as a sum of terms, indexed by regions on a unit sphere. In this paper detailed estimates of the terms corresponding to general regions are developed. These results form the technical heart of the proof of the Kepler conjecture, by giving detailed bounds on the function f. The results rely on long computer calculations.

Received November 11, 1998, and in revised form September 12, 2003, and July 25, 2005. Online publication February 27, 2006.

The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1129-1_12