On the Undecidability of Tiling the $3$-dimensional Space with a Set of $3$ Polycubes

TL;DR

This paper proves that determining whether a set of three polycubes can tile three-dimensional space through translation is an undecidable problem, advancing understanding of tiling problems' computational limits.

Contribution

It establishes the undecidability of translational tiling in 3D space using only three polycubes, a significant step towards understanding tiling problem complexities.

Findings

Undecidability of 3D tiling with three polycubes

Supports the conjecture of fixed dimension undecidability

Advances the theory of computational limits in tiling problems

Abstract

Translational tiling problems are among the most fundamental and representative undecidable problems in all fields of mathematics. Greenfeld and Tao obtained two remarkable results on the undecidability of translational tiling in recent years. One is the existence of an aperiodic monotile in a space of sufficiently large dimension. The other is the undecidability of translational tiling of periodic subsets of space with a single tile, provided that the dimension of the space is part of the input. These two results support the following conjecture: there is a fixed dimension $n$ such that translational tiling with a single tile is undecidable. One strategy towards solving this conjecture is to prove the undecidability of translational tiling of a fixed dimension space with a set of $k$ tiles, for a positive integer $k$ as small as possible. In this paper, it is shown that translational tiling the $3$-dimensional space with a set of $3$ polycubes is undecidable.