3 research outputs found
Polyominoes Simulating Arbitrary-Neighborhood Zippers and Tilings
This paper provides a bridge between the classical tiling theory and the
complex neighborhood self-assembling situations that exist in practice. The
neighborhood of a position in the plane is the set of coordinates which are
considered adjacent to it. This includes classical neighborhoods of size four,
as well as arbitrarily complex neighborhoods. A generalized tile system
consists of a set of tiles, a neighborhood, and a relation which dictates which
are the "admissible" neighboring tiles of a given tile. Thus, in correctly
formed assemblies, tiles are assigned positions of the plane in accordance to
this relation. We prove that any validly tiled path defined in a given but
arbitrary neighborhood (a zipper) can be simulated by a simple "ribbon" of
microtiles. A ribbon is a special kind of polyomino, consisting of a
non-self-crossing sequence of tiles on the plane, in which successive tiles
stick along their adjacent edge. Finally, we extend this construction to the
case of traditional tilings, proving that we can simulate
arbitrary-neighborhood tilings by simple-neighborhood tilings, while preserving
some of their essential properties.Comment: Submitted to Theoretical Computer Scienc