English

Non-side-to-side tilings of the sphere by congruent triangles with any irrational angle

Combinatorics 2025-05-23 v1

Abstract

We develop the basic and new tools for classifying non-side-to-side tilings of the sphere by congruent triangles. Then we prove that, if the triangle has any irrational angle in degree, such tilings are: a sequence of 1-parameter families of triangles each admitting many 2-layer earth map tilings with 2n2n(n3n\geq3) tiles, together with rotational modifications for even nn; a 1-parameter family of triangles each admitting a unique tiling with 88 tiles; and a sporadic triangle admitting a unique tiling with 1616 tiles. Then a scheme is outlined to classify the case with all angles being rational in degree, justified by some known and new examples.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2505.16629,
  title  = {Non-side-to-side tilings of the sphere by congruent triangles with any irrational angle},
  author = {Wen Chen and Jinjin Liang and Erxiao Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.16629},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

22 pages, 25 figures,