Undecidability of translational monotilings
In the 1960s, Berger famously showed that translational tilings of \mathbb{Z}^{2} with multiple tiles are algorithmically undecidable. Recently, Bhattacharya proved the decidability of translational monotilings (tilings by translations of a single tile) in \mathbb{Z}^{2} . The decidability of translational monotilings in higher dimensions remained unsolved. In this paper, by combining our recently developed techniques with ideas introduced by Aanderaa–Lewis, we finally settle this problem, achieving the undecidability of translational monotilings of (periodic subsets of) virtually \mathbb{Z}^{2} spaces, namely, spaces of the form \mathbb{Z}^{2}\times G_{0} , where G_{0} is a finite Abelian group. This also implies the undecidability of translational monotilings in \mathbb{Z}^{d} , d\geq 3 .
Authors
- Rachel Greenfeld (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9461-5713)
- Terence Tao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0140-7641)
Institutions
- Northwestern University (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Journal of the European Mathematical Society
- Published
- 2025-06-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.4171/jems/1673
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Cellular Automata and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.50