title: Unusually dense crystal packings of ellipsoids.
abstract: In this Letter, we report on the densest-known packings of congruent ellipsoids. The family of new packings consists of crystal arrangements of spheroids with a wide range of aspect ratios, and with density phi always surpassing that of the densest Bravais lattice packing phi approximately equal to 0.7405. A remarkable maximum density of phi approximately equal to 0.7707 is achieved for maximal aspect ratios larger than sqrt[3], when each ellipsoid has 14 touching neighbors. Our results are directly relevant to understanding the equilibrium behavior of systems of hard ellipsoids, and, in particular, the solid and glassy phases.
authors.affiliation: Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
authors.forename: Aleksandar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Donev
authors.forename: Frank H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Stillinger
authors.forename: P M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Chaikin
authors.forename: Salvatore
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Torquato