Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2010
Let be a sequence of mutually disjoint open balls, with centres xj and corresponding radii aj, each contained in the closed unit ball in d-dimensional euclidean space, ℝd. Further we suppose, for simplicity, that the balls Bj are indexed so that aj≥aj+1. The set
obtained by removing, from the balls {Bj} is called the residual set. We say that the balls {Bj} constitute a packing of provided that λ(ℛ)=0, where λ denotes the d-dimensional Lebesgue measure. Thus it follows that henceforth denoted by c(d), whilst the packing restraint ensures that Larman [11] has noted that, under these circumstances, one also has .