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Tiling the line with translates of one tile

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A region \(T\) is a closed subset of the real line of positive finite Lebesgue measure which has a boundary of measure zero. Call a region \(T\) a tile if\({\Bbb R}\) can be tiled by measure-disjoint translates of \(T\). For a bounded tile all tilings of\({\Bbb R}\) with its translates are periodic, and there are finitely many translation-equivalence classes of such tilings. The main result of the paper is that for any tiling of\({\Bbb R}\) by a bounded tile, any two tiles in the tiling differ by a rational multiple of the minimal period of the tiling. From it we deduce a structure theorem characterizing such tiles in terms of complementing sets for finite cyclic groups.

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Received January 1995 / Accepted August 10, 1995

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Lagarias, J., Wang, Y. Tiling the line with translates of one tile . Invent math 124, 341–365 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/s002220050056

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s002220050056

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