Packing and Minkowski Covering of Congruent Spherical Caps

Let Ci (i = 1, ..., N) be the i-th open spherical cap of angular radius r and let Mi be its center under the condition that none of the spherical caps contains the center of another one in its interior. We consider the upper bound, rN (not the lower bound!) of r of the case in which the whole spherical surface of a unit sphere is completely covered with N congruent open spherical caps under the condition, sequentially for i = 2, ..., N – 1, that Mi is set on the perimeter of Ci–1, and that each area of the set ( ν= − 1 1 i Cν) Ci becomes maximum. In this study, for N = 2, ..., 9, we found out that the solutions of the above covering and the solutions of Tammes problem were strictly correspondent.