Square-triangle tilings: an infinite playground for soft matter

Marianne Imperor-Clerc, Université Paris-Saclay. Part of the Leeds Applied Nonlinear Dynamics seminar series.

Speaker: Marianne Imperor-Clerc

Title: Square-triangle tilings: an infinite playground for soft matter

Abstract: Regular square and triangle, two very simple geometrical figures, can be used to construct a fascinating variety of tilings which cover the 2D plane without any overlaps or holes. Such tilings are observed in many soft matter systems. We follow a geometrical approach based on the lifting of a tiling in a four-dimensional superspace. A classification of all possible globally uniform square-triangle phases is
obtained by taking into account both the overall composition and the orientations of the two kinds of tiles. 

Generalisation to tilings containing three different tiles will be discussed. Read more on the softqc wordpress site.