Space tilings and local isomorphism (Q1190978)

The paper deals with tilings of Euclidean \(n\)-space, where every tile is an isometric copy of some prototile always being homeomorphic to the \(n\)- ball. (Notice that there is a fixed finite set of pairwise noncongruent prototiles, and that the boundary of a given tile can be covered by other tiles, without overlapping, in only a finite number of ways.) A finite set of nonoverlapping tiles is called a patch, and a tiling \(T\) enjoys the local isomorphism property if for every patch \(P\) in \(T\) there is some distance \(d(P)\) with each sphere of diameter \(d(P)\) containing an isometric copy of \(P\). It is shown that if a set of prototiles admits a tiling, it must admit a tiling having the local isomorphism property. Furthermore, the authors emphasize the usefulness of ergodic theory as a tool of tiling theory.