Aperiodicity, rotational tiling spaces and topological space groups

Abstract: We study the rotational structures of aperiodic tilings in Euclidean space of arbitrary dimension using topological methods. Classical topological approaches to the study of aperiodic patterns have largely concentrated just on translational structures, studying an associated space, the continuous hull, here denoted

O m e g a_{t}

. In this article we consider two further spaces

O m e g a_{r}

and

O m e g a_{G}

(the rotational hulls) which capture the full rigid motion properties of the underlying patterns. The rotational hull

O m e g a_{r}

is shown to be a matchbox manifold which contains

O m e g a_{t}

as a sub-matchbox manifold. We develop new S-MLD invariants derived from the homotopical and cohomological properties of these spaces demonstrating their computational as well as theoretical utility. We compute these invariants for a variety of examples, including a class of 3-dimensional aperiodic patterns, as well as for the space of periodic tessellations of

m a t h b b R^{3}

by unit cubes. We show that the classical space group of symmetries of a periodic pattern may be recovered as the fundamental group of our space

O m e g a_{G}

. Similarly, for those patterns associated to quasicrystals, the crystallographers' aperiodic space group may be recovered as a quotient of our fundamental invariant.

Review text

An effective way to study the topological properties associated to a tiling \(T\) is to construct a tiling space (or a translational hull) which is a matchbox manifold. The authors consider the extension to rotations and use shape theory since the classical homotopy groups are not appropriate for general aperiodic tilings. The rotational hull \(\Omega_{r}\) of \(T\) is defined as the set of tilings whose finite patches appear in \(T\) up to orientation preserving isometries (rigid motions). It is also a matchbox manifold and it was previously studied in [\textit{L. Sadun}, Topology of tiling spaces. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (2008; Zbl 1166.52001); \textit{M. Barge} et al., Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 30, No. 6, 1607--1627 (2010; Zbl 1225.37021)]. Another space used in this paper is the homotopy quotient of the rotational hull by the point group \(G\) of \(T\), denoted by \(\Omega_{G}\). Only tilings with finite local complexity are considered, excluding for example the pinwheel tiling, which has an infinite point group. The study of the topology of \(\Omega_{r}\) and \(\Omega_{G}\) is used to define algebraic objects related to an aperiodic tiling that are invariant under the S-MLD (``Mutually Locally Derived) equivalence relation, which is associated to rigid motions of finite patches within the tilings. The computation of these invariants is difficult in general, however certain particular cases can be analysed. For example, it is considered an aperiodic tiling \(\mathcal{F}\) in \({\mathbb{R}}^3\) given by cuboid tiles decorated as the Cartesian product of three copies of a one-dimensional tiling with two tile types distributed according to a Sturmian sequence. The cohomology \(H^{n}(\Omega_{r};{\mathbb{Z}})\) of the rotational hull is determined for both the periodic cubic tiling in \({\mathbb{R}}^3\) and \(\mathcal{F}\).

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scientific article; zbMATH DE number 5358070 (Why is no real title available?)

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