An aperiodic hexagonal tile
Abstract
We show that a single prototile can fill space uniformly but not admit a periodic tiling. A two-dimensional, hexagonal prototile with markings that enforce local matching rules is proven to be aperiodic by two independent methods. The space--filling tiling that can be built from copies of the prototile has the structure of a union of honeycombs with lattice constants of , where sets the scale of the most dense lattice and takes all positive integer values. There are two local isomorphism classes consistent with the matching rules and there is a nontrivial relation between these tilings and a previous construction by Penrose. Alternative forms of the prototile enforce the local matching rules by shape alone, one using a prototile that is not a connected region and the other using a three--dimensional prototile.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1003.4279,
title = {An aperiodic hexagonal tile},
author = {Joshua E. S. Socolar and Joan M. Taylor},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1003.4279},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
32 pages, 24 figures; submitted to Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A. Version 2 is a major revision. Parts of Version 1 have been expanded and parts have been moved to a separate article (arXiv:1003.4279)