Combinatorics of a fractal tiling family

Abstract

In this paper, we propose to enumerate all different configurations belonging to a specific class of fractals: A binary initial tile is selected and a finite recursive tiling process is engaged to produce auto-similar binary patterns. For each initial tile choice the number of possible configurations is finite. This combinatorial problem recalls the famous Escher tiling problem [2]. By using the Burnside lemma we show that there are exactly 232 really different fractals when the initial tile is a particular 2x2 matrix. Partial results are also presented in the 3x3 case when the initial tile presents some symmetry properties.