English

Rationality of certain triangle tilings

Combinatorics 2026-04-03 v1

Abstract

We consider tilings of a triangle ABCABC by congruent copies of a triangle that has one angle equal to 120120^\circ, has non-commensurable angles (that is, not all angles are rational multiples of π\pi), and is not similar to ABCABC. We prove that any such tiling has commensurable sides, meaning that the side lengths can be taken to be integers after scaling. As a consequence, we show that outside of a couple of special cases, a triangle (allowing all angles) tiling must either have commensurable angles or commensurable sides (that is, all sides have rational ratios).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.01314,
  title  = {Rationality of certain triangle tilings},
  author = {Michael Beeson and Yan X Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.01314},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:49:46.957Z