Fractal tiles associated with shift radix systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces fractal tiles linked to shift radix systems, generalizing known numeration system tiles, and explores their properties, tiling behavior, and structural complexity in the context of dynamical systems.

Contribution

It establishes a connection between shift radix system tiles and classical numeration system tiles, and analyzes their tiling properties and structural complexity.

Findings

Tiles coincide with known tiles for certain parameters.

Tiles can form multiple tilings or tilings of the space.

Tiles may have infinitely many shapes and lack self-affinity.

Abstract

Shift radix systems form a collection of dynamical systems depending on a parameter $\mathbf{r}$ which varies in the $d$-dimensional real vector space. They generalize well-known numeration systems such as beta-expansions, expansions with respect to rational bases, and canonical number systems. Beta-numeration and canonical number systems are known to be intimately related to fractal shapes, such as the classical Rauzy fractal and the twin dragon. These fractals turned out to be important for studying properties of expansions in several settings. In the present paper we associate a collection of fractal tiles with shift radix systems. We show that for certain classes of parameters $\mathbf{r}$ these tiles coincide with affine copies of the well-known tiles associated with beta-expansions and canonical number systems. On the other hand, these tiles provide natural families of tiles for beta-expansions with (non-unit) Pisot numbers as well as canonical number systems with (non-monic) expanding polynomials. We also prove basic properties for tiles associated with shift radix systems. Indeed, we prove that under some algebraic conditions on the parameter $\mathbf{r}$ of the shift radix system, these tiles provide multiple tilings and even tilings of the $d$-dimensional real vector space. These tilings turn out to have a more complicated structure than the tilings arising from the known number systems mentioned above. Such a tiling may consist of tiles having infinitely many different shapes. Moreover, the tiles need not be self-affine (or graph directed self-affine).