Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Socolar–Taylor tile

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Socolar–Taylor tile

The Socolar–Taylor tile is a single tile which is aperiodic on the Euclidean plane, meaning that it admits only non-periodic tilings of the plane, with rotations and reflections of the tile allowed. It is the first known example of a single aperiodic tile, or "einstein". The basic version of the tile is a simple hexagon, with printed designs to enforce a local matching rule, regarding how the tiles may be placed. This rule cannot be geometrically implemented in two dimensions while keeping the tile a connected set.

This is, however, possible in three dimensions, and in their original paper Socolar and Taylor suggest a three-dimensional analogue to the monotile. Taylor and Socolar remark that the 3D monotile aperiodically tiles three-dimensional space. However the tile does allow tilings with a period, shifting one (non-periodic) two dimensional layer to the next, and so the tile is only ″weakly aperiodic″. Physical copies of the three-dimensional tile could not be fitted together without allowing reflections, which would require access to four-dimensional space.

References

Socolar–Taylor tile Wikipedia