Quasicrystals and the Wulff-Shape

Abstract

Infinite sphere packings give information about the structure but not about the shape of large dense sphere packings. For periodic sphere packings a new method was introduced in [W2], [W3], [Sc], and [BB], which gave a direct relation between dense periodic sphere packings and the Wulff-shape, which describes the shape of ideal crystals. In this paper we show for the classical Penrose tiling that dense finite quasiperiodic circle packings also lead to a Wulff-shape. This indicates that the shape of quasicrystals might be explained in terms of a finite packing density. Here we prove an isoperimetric inequality for unions of Penrose rhombs, which shows that the regular decagon is, in a sense, optimal among these sets. Motivated by the analysis of linear densities in the Penrose plane we introduce a surface energy for a class of polygons, which is analogous to the Gibbs—Curie surface energy for periodic crystals. This energy is minimized by the Wulff-shape, which is always a polygon and in certain cases it is the regular decagon, in accordance with the fivefold symmetry of quasicrystals.