Frank Morgan

Just as a a soap bubble minimizes surface area, crystals minimize a more general energy depending on orientation with respect to the underlying crystal lattice, given by integrating some (continuous) norm on the unit normal. (One might drop the usual assumption that a norm is even.) The optimal shape is the unit ball of the dual norm, called the Wulff crystal (see [M2, Chapt. 16]). Continue reading ‘Clusters for General Norms’ »