Fixed Point and Aperiodic Tilings

An aperiodic tile set was first constructed by R.Berger while proving the undecidability of the domino problem. It turned out that aperiodic tile sets appear in many topics ranging from logic (the Entscheidungsproblem) to physics (quasicrystals) We present a new construction of an aperiodic tile set that is based on Kleene's fixed-point construction instead of geometric arguments. This construction is similar to J. von Neumann self-reproducing automata; similar ideas were also used by P. Gacs in the context of error-correcting computations. The flexibility of this construction allows us to construct a "robust" aperiodic tile set that does not have periodic (or close to periodic) tilings even if we allow some (sparse enough) tiling errors. This property was not known for any of the existing aperiodic tile sets.Comment: v5: technical revision (positions of figures are shifted

1D Effectively Closed Subshifts and 2D Tilings

Michael Hochman showed that every 1D effectively closed subshift can be simulated by a 3D subshift of finite type and asked whether the same can be done in 2D. It turned out that the answer is positive and necessary tools were already developed in tilings theory. We discuss two alternative approaches: first, developed by N. Aubrun and M. Sablik, goes back to Leonid Levin; the second one, developed by the authors, goes back to Peter Gacs.Comment: Journ\'ees Automates Cellulaires, Turku : Finland (2010

Two-by-two Substitution Systems and the Undecidability of the Domino Problem

10+6 pagesThanks to a careful study of elementary properties of two-by-two substitution systems, we give a complete self-contained elementary construction of an aperiodic tile set and sketch how to use this tile set to elementary prove the undecidability of the classical Domino Problem

Sparse sets

ISBN 978-5-94057-377-7International audienceFor a given p>0 we consider sequences that are random with respect to p-Bernoulli distribution and sequences that can be obtained from them by replacing ones by zeros. We call these sequences sparse and study their properties. They can be used in the robustness analysis for tilings or computations and in percolation theory. This talk is a report on an (unfinished) work and is based on the discussions with many people in Lyon and Marseille (B. Durand, P. Gacs, D. Regnault, G. Richard a.o.) and Moscow (at the Kolmogorov seminar: A. Minasyan, M. Raskin, A. Rumyantsev, N. Vereshchagin, D. Hirschfeldt a.o.)

Simulation of Effective Subshifts by Two-dimensional Subshifts of Finite Type

International audienceIn this article we study how a subshift can simulate another one, where the notion of simulation is given by operations on subshifts inspired by the dynamical systems theory (factor, projective subaction...). There exists a correspondence between the notion of simulation and the set of forbidden patterns. The main result of this paper states that any effective subshift of dimension d – that is a subshift whose set of forbidden patterns can be generated by a Turing machine – can be obtained by applying dynamical operations on a subshift of finite type of dimension d + 1 – a subshift that can be defined by a finite set of forbidden patterns. This result improves Hochman's [Hoc09]

Fixed-point tile sets and their applications

v4: added references to a paper by Nicolas Ollinger and several historical commentsAn aperiodic tile set was first constructed by R. Berger while proving the undecidability of the domino problem. It turned out that aperiodic tile sets appear in many topics ranging from logic (the Entscheidungsproblem) to physics (quasicrystals). We present a new construction of an aperiodic tile set that is based on Kleene's fixed-point construction instead of geometric arguments. This construction is similar to J. von Neumann self-reproducing automata; similar ideas were also used by P. Gacs in the context of error-correcting computations. This construction it rather flexible, so it can be used in many ways: we show how it can be used to implement substitution rules, to construct strongly aperiodic tile sets (any tiling is far from any periodic tiling), to give a new proof for the undecidability of the domino problem and related results, characterize effectively closed 1D subshift it terms of 2D shifts of finite type (improvement of a result by M. Hochman), to construct a tile set which has only complex tilings, and to construct a "robust" aperiodic tile set that does not have periodic (or close to periodic) tilings even if we allow some (sparse enough) tiling errors. For the latter we develop a hierarchical classification of points in random sets into islands of different ranks. Finally, we combine and modify our tools to prove our main result: there exists a tile set such that all tilings have high Kolmogorov complexity even if (sparse enough) tiling errors are allowed