On the emergence of almost-honeycomb structures in low-energy planar clusters

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Caroccia, Marco, DeMason, Kenneth, Maggi, Francesco
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Caroccia, Marco
DeMason, Kenneth
Maggi, Francesco
author_facet Caroccia, Marco
DeMason, Kenneth
Maggi, Francesco
contents 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 particular that the vast majority of the chambers must be generalized polygons with six edges, and be closely resembling regular hexagons. Part of our arguments is a detailed revision of the estimates behind the global isoperimetric principle for honeycomb clusters due to Hales (T. C. Hales. The honeycomb conjecture. Discrete Comput. Geom., 25(1):1-22, 2001).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_05373
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the emergence of almost-honeycomb structures in low-energy planar clusters
Caroccia, Marco
DeMason, Kenneth
Maggi, Francesco
Optimization and Control
Mathematical Physics
Differential Geometry
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 particular that the vast majority of the chambers must be generalized polygons with six edges, and be closely resembling regular hexagons. Part of our arguments is a detailed revision of the estimates behind the global isoperimetric principle for honeycomb clusters due to Hales (T. C. Hales. The honeycomb conjecture. Discrete Comput. Geom., 25(1):1-22, 2001).
title On the emergence of almost-honeycomb structures in low-energy planar clusters
topic Optimization and Control
Mathematical Physics
Differential Geometry
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.05373