Golden, Quasicrystalline, Chiral Packings of Tetrahedra

Abstract: Since antiquity, the packing of convex shapes has been of great interest to many scientists and mathematicians. Recently, particular interest has been given to packings of three-dimensional tetrahedra. Dense packings of both crystalline and semi-quasicrystalline have been reported. It is interesting that a semiquasicrystalline packing of tetrahedra can emerge naturally within a thermodynamic simulation approach. However, this packing is not perfectly quasicrystalline and the packing density, while dense, is not maximal. Here we suggest that a "golden rotation" between tetrahedral facial junctions can arrange tetrahedra into a perfect quasicrystalline packing.