Optimal packings of superballs

Dense hard-particle packings are intimately related to the structure of low-temperature phases of matter and are useful models of heterogeneous materials and granular media. Most studies of the densest packings in three dimensions have considered spherical shapes, and it is only more recently that nonspherical shapes (e.g., ellipsoids) have been investigated. Superballs (whose shapes are defined by |x1|2p+|x2|2p+|x3|2por=0.5) with both cubic-like and octahedral-like shapes as well as concave particles (0