When shape matters: deformations of tiling spaces

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of tiling dynamical systems and their deformations. If two tiling systems have identical combinatorics, then the tiling spaces are homeomorphic, but their dynamical properties may differ. There is a natural map ${\mathcal I}$ from the parameter space of possible shapes of tiles to H¹ of a model tiling space, with values in ${\mathbb R}^d$. Two tiling spaces that have the same image under ${\mathcal I}$ are mutually locally derivable (MLD). When the difference of the images is ‘asymptotically negligible’, then the tiling dynamics are topologically conjugate, but generally not MLD. For substitution tilings, we give a simple test for a cohomology class to be asymptotically negligible, and show that infinitesimal deformations of shape result in topologically conjugate dynamics only when the change in the image of ${\mathcal I}$ is asymptotically negligible. Finally, we give criteria for a (deformed) substitution tiling space to be topologically weakly mixing.