Optimal separation of points

Sammanfattning: How should n points be distributed in a given region F in R^d such that they are separated as much as possible? This general problem is studied in this paper, for some combinations of F, d, n, and the ways one can state the problem mathematically. Some numerical optimization methods are suggested and tested, both on the point separation problem and the closely related circle packing problem. The results are compared with some known analytical results. The main conclusion is that the suggested numerical methods are useful general tools to obtain optimal solutions to the considered problems.