Line segments which are unions of tessellation edges

Abstract

Planar tessellation structures occur in material science, geology (in rock formations), physics (of foams, for example), biology (especially in epithelial studies) and in other sciences. Their mathematical and statistical study has many aspects to consider. In this paper, line-segments which are either a tessellation edge or a finite union of edges are studied. Our focus is on a sub-class of such line-segments – those we call M-segments – that are not contained in a longer union of edges. These encompass the so-called I-segments that have arisen in many recent tessellation models. We study the expected numbers of edges and cell-sides contained in these M-segments, and the prevalence of these entities. Many examples and figures, including some based on tessellation nesting and superposition, illustrate the theory. M-segments are much more prevalent when a tessellation is not side-to-side, so our paper has theoretical connections with the recent IAS paper by Cowan and Thäle (2014); that paper characterised non side-to-side tessellations.