Categorical Tiling Theory: Constructing Directed Planar Tilings via Edge Reversal

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: DiLeo, Catherine, Sessoms, Preston, Shapiro, Brandon T.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author DiLeo, Catherine
Sessoms, Preston
Shapiro, Brandon T.
author_facet DiLeo, Catherine
Sessoms, Preston
Shapiro, Brandon T.
contents Tilings of the plane resemble the simplicial and other complexes from algebraic topology, but have not been studied from this perspective. We construct finite categories corresponding to polygons with labeled directed edges, and introduce the problem of modeling tilings of the Euclidean or hyperbolic plane as presheaves over such a category. Combinatorially, this amounts to choosing an ``alignment'' for a tiling: a direction for every edge and consistent labels for the edges of each polygonal tile. We show that for a fixed tiling, given a single alignment we can characterize every other alignment of the same tiling by comparison of the edge directions. We then construct a ``reflective'' alignment for any tiling with an even number of polygons at each vertex, and from this generate a large family of alignments with elegant symmetry properties.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_06363
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Categorical Tiling Theory: Constructing Directed Planar Tilings via Edge Reversal
DiLeo, Catherine
Sessoms, Preston
Shapiro, Brandon T.
Category Theory
Combinatorics
Geometric Topology
Metric Geometry
18F99 (Primary) 52C20, 18F20, 05C10, 51F15, 51M10 (Secondary)
Tilings of the plane resemble the simplicial and other complexes from algebraic topology, but have not been studied from this perspective. We construct finite categories corresponding to polygons with labeled directed edges, and introduce the problem of modeling tilings of the Euclidean or hyperbolic plane as presheaves over such a category. Combinatorially, this amounts to choosing an ``alignment'' for a tiling: a direction for every edge and consistent labels for the edges of each polygonal tile. We show that for a fixed tiling, given a single alignment we can characterize every other alignment of the same tiling by comparison of the edge directions. We then construct a ``reflective'' alignment for any tiling with an even number of polygons at each vertex, and from this generate a large family of alignments with elegant symmetry properties.
title Categorical Tiling Theory: Constructing Directed Planar Tilings via Edge Reversal
topic Category Theory
Combinatorics
Geometric Topology
Metric Geometry
18F99 (Primary) 52C20, 18F20, 05C10, 51F15, 51M10 (Secondary)
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06363