The Isostatic Conjecture

Abstract

We show that a jammed packing of disks with generic radii, in a generic container, is such that the minimal number of contacts occurs and there is only one dimension of equilibrium stresses, which have been observed with numerical Monte Carlo simulations. We also point out some connections to packings with different radii and results in the theory of circle packings whose graph forms a triangulation of a given topological surface.