A counterexample to the periodic tiling conjecture

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Greenfeld, Rachel, Tao, Terence
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909308105523200
author Greenfeld, Rachel
Tao, Terence
author_facet Greenfeld, Rachel
Tao, Terence
contents The periodic tiling conjecture asserts that any finite subset of a lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$ which tiles that lattice by translations, in fact tiles periodically. In this work we disprove this conjecture for sufficiently large $d$, which also implies a disproof of the corresponding conjecture for Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{R}^d$. In fact, we also obtain a counterexample in a group of the form $\mathbb{Z}^2 \times G_0$ for some finite abelian $2$-group $G_0$. Our methods rely on encoding a "Sudoku puzzle" whose rows and other non-horizontal lines are constrained to lie in a certain class of "$2$-adically structured functions," in terms of certain functional equations that can be encoded in turn as a single tiling equation, and then demonstrating that solutions to this Sudoku puzzle exist, but are all non-periodic.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2211_15847
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A counterexample to the periodic tiling conjecture
Greenfeld, Rachel
Tao, Terence
Combinatorics
Dynamical Systems
05B45, 52C22, 52C23
The periodic tiling conjecture asserts that any finite subset of a lattice $\mathbb{Z}^d$ which tiles that lattice by translations, in fact tiles periodically. In this work we disprove this conjecture for sufficiently large $d$, which also implies a disproof of the corresponding conjecture for Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{R}^d$. In fact, we also obtain a counterexample in a group of the form $\mathbb{Z}^2 \times G_0$ for some finite abelian $2$-group $G_0$. Our methods rely on encoding a "Sudoku puzzle" whose rows and other non-horizontal lines are constrained to lie in a certain class of "$2$-adically structured functions," in terms of certain functional equations that can be encoded in turn as a single tiling equation, and then demonstrating that solutions to this Sudoku puzzle exist, but are all non-periodic.
title A counterexample to the periodic tiling conjecture
topic Combinatorics
Dynamical Systems
05B45, 52C22, 52C23
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.15847