Cubic Polyhedra

A cubic polyhedron is a polyhedral surface whose edges are exactly all the edges of the cubic lattice. Every such polyhedron is a discrete minimal surface, and it appears that many (but not all) of them can be relaxed to smooth minimal surfaces (under an appropriate smoothing flow, keeping their symmetries). Here we give a complete classification of the cubic polyhedra. Among these are five new infinite uniform polyhedra and an uncountable collection of new infinite semi-regular polyhedra. We also consider the somewhat larger class of all discrete minimal surfaces in the cubic lattice.Comment: 18 pages, many figure

Spontaneous graphitization of ultrathin cubic structures: A computational study

Results based on {\em ab initio} density functional calculations indicate a general graphitization tendency in ultrathin slabs of cubic diamond, boron nitride, and many other cubic structures including rocksalt. Whereas such compounds often show an energy preference for cubic rather than layered atomic arrangements in the bulk, the surface energy of layered systems is commonly lower than that of their cubic counterparts. We determine the critical slab thickness for a range of systems, below which a spontaneous conversion from a cubic to a layered graphitic structure occurs, driven by surface energy reduction in surface-dominated structures.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

The cubic chessboard

We present a survey of recent results, scattered in a series of papers that appeared during past five years, whose common denominator is the use of cubic relations in various algebraic structures. Cubic (or ternary) relations can represent different symmetries with respect to the permutation group S_3, or its cyclic subgroup Z_3. Also ordinary or ternary algebras can be divided in different classes with respect to their symmetry properties. We pay special attention to the non-associative ternary algebra of 3-forms (or ``cubic matrices''), and Z_3-graded matrix algebras. We also discuss the Z_3-graded generalization of Grassmann algebras and their realization in generalized exterior differential forms. A new type of gauge theory based on this differential calculus is presented. Finally, a ternary generalization of Clifford algebras is introduced, and an analog of Dirac's equation is discussed, which can be diagonalized only after taking the cube of the Z_3-graded generalization of Dirac's operator. A possibility of using these ideas for the description of quark fields is suggested and discussed in the last Section.Comment: 23 pages, dedicated to A. Trautman on the occasion of his 64th birthda

Minimal knotted polygons in cubic lattices

An implementation of BFACF-style algorithms on knotted polygons in the simple cubic, face centered cubic and body centered cubic lattice is used to estimate the statistics and writhe of minimal length knotted polygons in each of the lattices. Data are collected and analysed on minimal length knotted polygons, their entropy, and their lattice curvature and writhe

Stick index of knots and links in the cubic lattice

The cubic lattice stick index of a knot type is the least number of sticks necessary to construct the knot type in the 3-dimensional cubic lattice. We present the cubic lattice stick index of various knots and links, including all (p,p+1)-torus knots, and show how composing and taking satellites can be used to obtain the cubic lattice stick index for a relatively large infinite class of knots. Additionally, we present several bounds relating cubic lattice stick index to other known invariants.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figure

Packing fraction of crystalline structures of binary hard spheres: a general equation and application to amorphization

In a previous paper analytical equations were derived for the packing fraction of crystalline structures consisting of bimodal randomly placed hard spheres H. J. H. Brouwers, Phys. Rev. E 76, 041304 2007. The bimodal packing fraction was derived for the three crystalline cubic systems: viz., face-centered cubic, bodycentered cubic, and simple cubic. These three equations appeared also to be applicable to all 14 Bravais lattices. Here it is demonstrated, accounting for the number of distorted bonds in the building blocks and using graph theory, that one general packing equation can be derived, valid again for all lattices. This expression is validated and applied to the process of amorphization

Geometric realizations of Tamari interval lattices via cubic coordinates

We introduce cubic coordinates, which are integer words encoding intervals in the Tamari lattices. Cubic coordinates are in bijection with interval-posets, themselves known to be in bijection with Tamari intervals. We show that in each degree the set of cubic coordinates forms a lattice, isomorphic to the lattice of Tamari intervals. Geometric realizations are naturally obtained by placing cubic coordinates in space, highlighting some of their properties. We consider the cellular structure of these realizations. Finally, we show that the poset of cubic coordinates is shellable