Perfect colourings of cyclotomic integers (Q1938030)

Colour symmetries of coloured planar patterns are symmetries of the uncoloured pattern that act as global colour permutations on the coloured pattern. This paper studies colour symmetries of the rings of cyclotomic integers \(M_n = \mathbb{Z}[\exp(2 \pi i/n)]\) for the cases where \(M_n\) has class number one. Here, \(M_n\) is considered as a (dense) point set in the Euclidean plane. The colourings were introduced by \textit{R. V. Moody} and \textit{J. Patera} [Can. J. Phys. 72, No. 7--8, 442--452 (1994; Zbl 1043.52501)] and by \textit{U. Grimm} and the reviewer [Z. Kristallogr. 219, No. 2, 72--80 (2004; Zbl 1239.11073)] in order to study combinatorial properties of colour symmetries of planar quasiperiodic patterns. In this paper, they are used to study group-theoretic aspects of coloured crystallographic and non-crystallographic patterns. In particular, it is shown that each perfect colouring (i.e. one where any symmetry of the pattern is a colour symmetry of the coloured pattern) of \(M_n\) is induced by an ideal in \(M_n\). Moreover, a necessary and sufficient condition is obtained to decide whether a colouring induced by an ideal in \(M_n\) yields a perfect colouring of \(M_n\). Some older results of Grünbaum and Shephard and of Senechal on perfect colourings of crystallographic patterns are special cases of these results.