Organizers: Pablo Debenedetti, Frank Stillinger, Salvatore Torquato

The Princeton Center for Theoretical Physics will host a workshop entitled "Packing Problems, Classical Ground States, and Glasses" over the two-day period April 12-13, 2007 in Taplin Auditorium, Fine Hall, and A10, Jadwin Hall. A public lecture entitled "All the Best Ways to Pack Spheres" will be given by John Conway at 8:00pm on April 11th in A10, Jadwin Hall.

Packing problems, such as how densely solid objects fill space, have fascinated people since the dawn of civilization, and continue to intrigue scientists because of their connection to a host of problems that arise in the physical sciences and mathematics.While optimal packing problems are intimately related to ground states of condensed matter,disordered sphere packings have been employed to model the glassy state of matter. Sphere packings in high dimensions have relevance in communications theory and discrete geometers have along standing interest in packing problems. The aim of our workshop is to continue to foster the interchange of ideas between different fields by bringing together a diverse group of physicists, chemists, mathematicians and engineers who work on packing problems.

Specific topics that will be covered during the workshop include:

* Jamming and rigidity
* Classical ground states in Euclidean and curved spaces
* Glasses
* Quantification of randomness
* Phase transitions in hard-particle packings
* Sphere packings in high dimensions
* Error correcting codes
* Granular media
* Packing of proteins