Hexagonal parquet tilings: k-isohedral monotiles with arbitrarily large k

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of whether a single tile with nearest neighbor matching rules can force a tiling in which the tiles fall into a large number of isohedral classes. A single tile is exhibited that can fill the Euclidean plane only with a tiling that contains k distinct isohedral sets of tiles, where k can be made arbitrarily large. It is shown that the construction cannot work for a simply connected 2D tile with matching rules for adjacent tiles enforced by shape alone. It is also shown that any of the following modifications allows the construction to work: (1) coloring the edges of the tiling and imposing rules on which colors can touch; (2) allowing the tile to be multiply connected; (3) requiring maximum density rather than space-filling; (4) allowing the tile to have a thickness in the third dimension.