Symplectic Ball Packing

Find explicit embeddings of symplectic balls into a single target ball, taking up all but $\epsilon$ of the target ball's volume.

Notability: Major advance
Solved: No
Contributor: Kyler Siegel
Field: Topology / Geometry

About the problem

In dimension four, it is known that it is possible to fully fill a symplectic ball by $k$ symplectic balls of the same radius whenever $k \ge 10$. Here “fully fill” means that one can find a symplectomorphism under which the images of the balls take up all but $\epsilon$ of the volume of the target ball, for any arbitrarily small $\epsilon > 0$. However, the proof is not at all explicit. It remains an important open problem to find explicit constructions of these embeddings.

Warm-up: we ask about $k = 4$, where explicit constructions are already known.

Full write-up

Attempts by AI

We have evaluated the following models on this problem. “Warm-up” refers to an easier variant of the problem with a known solution.

Model
Problem
Solved
Logs
GPT-5.2 Pro
Warm-up
No
GPT-5.2 Pro
Full Problem
No
Gemini 3 Deep Think
Full Problem
No

AI Prompts

Warm-up

Fix $n=2$ and take $\epsilon \in (0,1)$. For $i = 1,\dots,4$, let $B_i \subset \R^{2n}$ denote the closed unit ball centered at $(3i-3,0,\dots,0)$. Your goal is to find an algorithm that takes $\epislon$ as input and produces as output an explicit smooth Hamiltonian function $H_\epsilon: \R^{2n} \times [0,1] \rightarrow \R$ whose time-$1$ Hamiltonian flow $\phi: \R^{2n} \ra \R^{2n}$ satisfies $\phi(\sqcup_{i=1}^{4}B_i) \subset B^{2n}(R)$, where $B^{2n}(R) \subset \R^{2n}$ is the closed ball centered at the origin of radius $R$, and where we require the volume ratio of $\bigsqcup\limits_{i=1}^{4} B_i$ to $B^{2n}(R)$ to satisfy $\dfrac{4}{R^{2n}} > 1 - \epsilon$. Present the algorithm as a Python program that takes $\epislon$ as input. The algorithm's output must itself be a Python program that implements the Hamiltonian for the given $\epislon$. This program should be in a file called Hamiltonian.py which implements a function Hamiltonian(Q, P, t) that has the following properties. - Takes inputs Q (positions), P (momenta), and t (time). - Must be implemented using PyTorch operations to support automatic differentiation. - Inputs Q and P will be `torch.Tensor`s of shape `(N, n)` (where N is the size of a batch size of points sampled from the boundaries of the input balls). - Input t will be a scalar float. - Returns a `torch.Tensor` of shape `(N,)` representing the Hamiltonian value for each point in the batch. - Is smooth, to ensure existence and uniqueness of flow. A solution to this problem is meant to rest on finding a family of embeddings that has a natural algorithmic dependence on $\epsilon$. As such, the algorithm that produces the Hamiltonians for a given $\epsilon$ must finish running in under an hour on a typical laptop. The Hamiltonian function itself will be called multiple times during solution verification and must return within ten seconds on each call.

Full problem

Fix $n=2$. Let $k \ge 10$ be an integer and take $\epsilon \in (0,1)$. For $i = 1,\dots,k$, let $B_i \subset \R^{2n}$ denote the closed unit ball centered at $(3i-3,0,\dots,0)$. Your goal is to find an algorithm that takes $k$ and $\epislon$ as inputs and produces as output an explicit smooth Hamiltonian function $H_\epsilon: \R^{2n} \times [0,1] \rightarrow \R$ whose time-$1$ Hamiltonian flow $\phi: \R^{2n} \ra \R^{2n}$ satisfies $\phi(\sqcup_{i=1}^{k}B_i) \subset B^{2n}(R)$, where $B^{2n}(R) \subset \R^{2n}$ is the closed ball centered at the origin of radius $R$, and where we require the volume ratio of $\bigsqcup\limits_{i=1}^{k} B_i$ to $B^{2n}(R)$ to satisfy $\dfrac{k}{R^{2n}} > 1 - \epsilon$. Present the algorithm as a Python program that takes $k$ and $\epislon$ as inputs. The algorithm's output must itself be a Python program that implements the Hamiltonian for the given $k$ and $\epislon$. This program should be in a file called Hamiltonian.py which implements a function Hamiltonian(Q, P, t) that has the following properties. - Takes inputs Q (positions), P (momenta), and t (time). - Must be implemented using PyTorch operations to support automatic differentiation. - Inputs Q and P will be `torch.Tensor`s of shape `(N, n)` (where N is the size of a batch size of points sampled from the boundaries of the input balls). - Input t will be a scalar float. - Returns a `torch.Tensor` of shape `(N,)` representing the Hamiltonian value for each point in the batch. - Is smooth, to ensure existence and uniqueness of flow. A solution to this problem is meant to rest on finding a family of embeddings that has a natural algorithmic dependence on $\epsilon$. As such, the algorithm that produces the Hamiltonians for a given $\epsilon$ must finish running in under an hour on a typical laptop. The Hamiltonian function itself will be called multiple times during solution verification and must return within ten seconds on each call.

Mathematician survey

The author assessed the problem as follows.

# of mathematicians highly familiar with the problem: a majority of those working on a specialized topic (≈10)
# of mathematicians who have made a serious attempt to solve the problem: 5–10
Rough guess of how long it would take an expert human to solve the problem: 1–3 months
Notability of a solution: a major advance in a subfield
A solution would be published: in a top journal for the field
Likelihood of a solution generating more interesting math: fairly likely: the problem is rich enough that most solutions should open new avenues
Probability that the problem is solvable as stated: 60–80%