English

On Subtilings of Polyomino Tilings

Combinatorics 2016-06-20 v3 Commutative Algebra

Abstract

We consider a problem concerning tilings of rectangular regions by a finite library of polyominoes. We specifically look at rectangular regions of dimension n×mn\times m and ask whether or not a tiling of this region can be rearranged so that tiling of the n×mn\times m rectangle can be realized as a tiling of an n×mn\times m' rectangle and an n×m"n\times m" rectangle, m=m+m"m=m'+m". We call this a subtiling. We show that the associated decision problem is NP\mathsf{NP}-complete when restricted to rectangular polyominoes. We also show that for certain finite libraries of polyominoes, if mm is sufficiently large, a subtiling always exists and give bounds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1602.05784,
  title  = {On Subtilings of Polyomino Tilings},
  author = {Jacob Turner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1602.05784},
  year   = {2016}
}