On the Number of p4-Tilings by an n-Omino

Abstract

A plane tiling by the copies of a polyomino is called isohedral if every pair of copies in the tiling has a symmetry of the tiling that maps one copy to the other. We show that, for every [Formula: see text]-omino (i.e., polyomino consisting of [Formula: see text] cells), the number of non-equivalent isohedral tilings generated by 90 degree rotations, so called p4-tilings or quarter-turn tilings, is bounded by a constant (independent of [Formula: see text]). The proof relies on the analysis of the factorization of the boundary word of a polyomino. We also show an example of a polyomino that has three non-equivalent p4-tilings.