Printable PDF
Department of Mathematics,
University of California San Diego

****************************

Food for Thought

Finn Southerland

UCSD

Why Haven't We Found Any More Aperiodic monotiles?

Abstract:

About two years ago, the world was rocked by the discovery of an aperiodic monotile dubbed the 'Hat' and its chiral cousin the 'Spectre'. Perhaps the really interesting thing about this discovery is that it came with a novel proof of aperiodicity which does not follow the standard arguments. One might expect that these new ideas would lead to the discovery of more aperiodic tiles, but even the Spectre was not analyzed this way! So why are there no more aperiodic monotiles, and why are the only two we know so closely related? No one seems to know. In this talk we demand answers, exploring the proof and trying to imagine how it could be adapted into a search strategy for more aperiodic tiles.

May 23, 2025

2:00 PM

APM 6402

****************************