Fig. 1: Colloidal realization of the finite sphere packing problem.
From: A colloidal viewpoint on the sausage catastrophe and the finite sphere packing problem
a State diagram of colloidal hard spheres enclosed in GUVs as a function of the number of colloids N and the reduced volume ν. Different symbols denote different colloid arrangements, according to the legend. Blue-shaded symbols are numerical state points colored according to the anisotropy shape parameter κ2, green symbols indicate numerical bistable state points, and orange symbols are experimental data. The error bars represent the standard deviation of the experimental data points combined with an image analysis error (see Supplementary Information). The orange line corresponds to νlin(N), while the blue lines are guides-to-the-eye for identifying the regions where linear, planar, and cluster configurations are predominant. b–i Sequence of time-lapse images obtained from 2D composite confocal and bright-field microscopy, and representative simulation snapshots revealing a bistable line-plate state point. The scale bar is 5 μm. j, k κ2 as a function of simulation time t/τ for bistable plate-linear and plate-cluster states, respectively, where \(\tau=\sqrt{m{\sigma }^{2}/\epsilon }\) represents the unit of time in simulations (see Methods).
