A counterexample to the periodic tiling conjecture

Abstract

The periodic tiling conjecture asserts that any finite subset of a lattice $\mathbb {Z}^d$ that tiles that lattice by translations, in fact tiles periodically. In this work we disprove this conjecture for sufficiently large $d$, which also implies a disproof of the corresponding conjecture for Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{R}^d$. In fact, we also obtain a counterexample in a group of the form $\mathbb{Z}^2 \times G_0$ for some finite abelian $2$-group $G_0$. Our methods rely on encoding a “Sudoku puzzle” whose rows and other non-horizontal lines are constrained to lie in a certain class of “$2$-adically structured functions,” in terms of certain functional equations that can be encoded in turn as a single tiling equation, and then demonstrating that solutions to this Sudoku puzzle exist, but are all non-periodic.