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Packing 13 circles in an equilateral triangle

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Abstract

The maximum separation problem is to find the maximum of the minimum pairwise distance of n points in a planar body \({\mathcal {B}}\) on the Euclidean plane. In this paper this problem will be considered if \({\mathcal {B}}\) is the equilateral triangle of side length 1 and the number of points is 13. We will present the exact separation distance of 13 points in the equilateral triangle of side length 1 and we will prove a conjecture of Melissen from 1993 and a conjecture of Graham and Lubachevsky from 1995.

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Correspondence to Antal Joós.

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Supported by EFOP-3.6.1-16-2016-00003 funds, Consolidate long-term R and D and I processes at the University of Dunaujvaros.

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Joós, A. Packing 13 circles in an equilateral triangle. Aequat. Math. 95, 35–65 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00010-020-00753-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00010-020-00753-y

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