An aperiodic hexagonal tile

We show that a single prototile can fill space uniformly but not admit a periodic tiling. A two-dimensional, hexagonal prototile with markings that enforce local matching rules is proven to be aperiodic by two independent methods. The space--filling tiling that can be built from copies of the prototile has the structure of a union of honeycombs with lattice constants of $2^n a$, where $a$ sets the scale of the most dense lattice and $n$ takes all positive integer values. There are two local isomorphism classes consistent with the matching rules and there is a nontrivial relation between these tilings and a previous construction by Penrose. Alternative forms of the prototile enforce the local matching rules by shape alone, one using a prototile that is not a connected region and the other using a three--dimensional prototile.Comment: 32 pages, 24 figures; submitted to Journal of Combinatorial Theory Series A. Version 2 is a major revision. Parts of Version 1 have been expanded and parts have been moved to a separate article (arXiv:1003.4279

Exactly solvable one-dimensional inhomogeneous models

International audienceWe present a simple way of constructing one-dimensional inhomogeneous models (random or quasiperiodic) which can be solved exactly. We treat the example of an Ising chain in a varying magnetic field, but our procedure can easily be extended to other one-dimensional inhomogeneous models. For all the models we can construct, the free energy and its derivatives with respect to temperature can be computed exactly at one particular temperature

Variations on a theme of Hardy's

International audienc