# all lines tangent to four spheres¶

The problem is to find all lines that are tangent to four spheres. In Fig. 9, the special case is shown where the four spheres are mutually touching each other. In this case, a tangent line goes from one pair of touching spheres to another, opposite pair of touching spheres.

Fig. 9 Four mutually touching spheres and their common tangent lines.

Solving the polynomial system associated with the configuration in Fig. 9 shows that each tangent line occurs with multiplicity four. Counting with multiplicities, the number of tangent lines thus equals twelve.

This problem was studied by I.G. Macdonald, J. Pach, and T. Theobald, who wrote the paper Common Tangents to Four Unit Balls in $${\mathbb R}^3$$ published in Discrete and Computational Geometry 26(1): 1-17, 2001. Many instances of this problem appear in the book by Frank Sottile, entitled Real Solutions to Equations from Geometry published as Volume 57 of University Lecture Series, AMS, 2011. The formulation of the problem, representing tangent lines by moment and tangent vectors, is described in the PhD thesis of Cassiano Durand: Symbolic and Numerical Techniques for Constraint Solving, Purdue University, 1998.

The tangent lines are represented in Pluecker coordinates, with a tangent $${\bf t}$$ and moment $${\bf m}$$ vector. For a point $${\bf p}$$ on the line, its cross product with the tangent vector equals the moment vector, or in equation form: $${\bf m} = {\bf p} \times {\bf t}$$. For a reference on this representation, consider the book Mechanics of robotic manipulation by Matthew T. Mason, MIT Press, 2001.

## four mutually touching spheres¶

The centers of the four mutually touching spheres in Fig. 9 are $$(+1, +1, +1)$$, $$(+1, -1, -1)$$, $$(-1, +1, -1)$$, $$(-1, -1, +1)$$, and the radius is the same for all four spheres: $$\sqrt{2}$$.

The tangent lines are defined by a moment vector $${\bf m} = (x_0, x_1, x_2)$$ and a tangent vector $${\bf t} = (x_3, x_4, x_5)$$. The moment vector $$\bf m$$ is perpendicular to the tangent vector $$\bf t$$, which gives the first equation: $$x_0 x_3 + x_1 x_4 + x_2 x_5 = 0$$. The tangent vector is normalized: $$||{\bf t}||_2 = 1$$, which gives the second equation $$x_3^2 + x_4^2 + x_5^2 = 1$$. For each center $$\bf c$$ and radius $$r$$ of a sphere, the equation is

$({\bf m} - {\bf c} \times {\bf t}) \cdot ({\bf m} - {\bf c} \times {\bf t}) - r^2 = 0,$

where $$\times$$ is the cross product and where $$\cdot$$ is the dot product. So we end up with a polynomial system of six equations in six unknowns.

The code in Sage to generate the polynomial system is below:

x0, x1, x2 = var('x0, x1, x2')
t = (x0, x1, x2)
vt = vector(t)   # tangent vector
normt = vt.dot_product(vt) - 1
x3, x4, x5 = var('x3, x4, x5')
m = (x3, x4, x5)
vm = vector(m)   # moment vector
momt = vt.dot_product(vm)
eqs = [normt, momt]
print 'the center :', ctr
vc = vector(ctr)
left = vm - vc.cross_product(vt)
eqs.append(equ)


Then the input system for the blackbox solver of phcpy is the list of the string representations of the polynomials in eqs.

polsys = []
for equ in eqs:
pol = str(equ) + ';'
polsys.append(pol)


Calling the blackbox solver then happens as

from phcpy.solver import solve
sols = solve(pols, verbose=False)
for sol in sols:
print sol


and we see the multiplicity four solutions printed.

Lines are represented as $${\bf m} = {\bf p} \times {\bf t}$$, where $${\bf p}$$ is a point on the line. The solutions of the polynomial system give values for the components of the moment vector $${\bf m} = (x_0, x_1, x_2)$$ and the tangent vector $${\bf t} = (x_3, x_4, x_5)$$. To draw the line defined by $${\bf m}$$ and $${\bf t}$$ we need to compute the coordinates of $${\bf p} = (p_1, p_2, p_3)$$ which can be done via a simple cross product, because the tangent vector $${\bf t}$$ is normalized to one. The cross product $${\bf p} = {\bf t} \times {\bf m}$$ gives the coordinates of the point on the line closest to the origin.

## tangents lines of multiplicities two¶

If the four spheres are centered at $$(2, 2, 0)$$, $$(2, 0, 2)$$, $$(0, 2, 2)$$, $$(0, 0, 0)$$, and the radius of all four spheres is $$3/2$$, then there are six lines tangents to all four spheres, which are to be counted each with multiplicity two, shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 10 Six lines touching four spheres.

The reference for this case is the paper by Frank Sottile and Thorsten Theobald: Line problems in nonlinear computational geometry, published in Computational Geometry - Twenty Years Later, pages 411-432, edited by J.E. Goodman, J. Pach, and R. Pollack, AMS, 2008.

The setup for the polynomial systems is identical to that of the previous section.

## twelve real single tangent lines¶

A configuration with twelve real tangent lines of multiplicity one can be obtained by changing the radii in Fig. 9. Instead of taking $$\sqrt{2}$$ as the value for each radius, the radius of each sphere is enlarged to $$\sqrt{2.01}$$. This change is large enough for the quadruple tangent lines to split into single tangent lines and small enough for the single tangent lines to appears in clustered groups of four each, as shown in Fig. 11.

Fig. 11 Twelve single real tangent lines clustered in groups of four.

The script tangents4spheres.sage and the Sage notebook tangents4spheres.sws in the examples folder of the src/Python/PHCpy2 source distribution provide all details of the calculations.