English

Consistency of multidimensional combinatorial substitutions

Discrete Mathematics 2014-06-27 v2 Formal Languages and Automata Theory Combinatorics

Abstract

Multidimensional combinatorial substitutions are rules that replace symbols by finite patterns of symbols in Zd\mathbb Z^d. We focus on the case where the patterns are not necessarily rectangular, which requires a specific description of the way they are glued together in the image by a substitution. Two problems can arise when defining a substitution in such a way: it can fail to be consistent, and the patterns in an image by the substitution might overlap. We prove that it is undecidable whether a two-dimensional substitution is consistent or overlapping, and we provide practical algorithms to decide these properties in some particular cases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1112.1841,
  title  = {Consistency of multidimensional combinatorial substitutions},
  author = {Timo Jolivet and Jarkko Kari},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.1841},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

13 pages, v2 includes corrections to match the published version

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:48:20.768Z