ALGORITHM TO COMPUTE VOID STATISTICS FOR RANDOM ARRAYS OF DISKS

In many-particle systems, the void space (the space not occupied by th e particles themselves) is of great interest because of its rich topol ogical features and, because it is key in determining the macroscopic properties of the system. Unfortunately, the complex shape and connect edness properties of the void space make precise measurements of quant ities that characterize it very difficult, and such measurements must often be made by crude sampling techniques. In this paper we present a method by which void characteristics in random systems of disks can b e calculated exactly, in principle. This procedure allows us to comput e with very high precision ''void'' nearest-neighbor distribution func tions over a wide range of disk densities. A comparison of these neare st-neighbor measurements to recent theoretical predictions reveals tha t the predictions are highly accurate.