English

An aperiodic hexagonal tile

Combinatorics 2015-03-13 v2 Other Condensed Matter

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 2na2^n a, where aa sets the scale of the most dense lattice and nn 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)

R2 v1 2026-06-21T15:00:59.943Z