Measurable Tilings by Abelian Group Actions

Abstract

Abstract Let $X$ be a measure space with a measure-preserving action $(g,x) \mapsto g \cdot x$ of an abelian group $G$. We consider the problem of understanding the structure of measurable tilings $F \odot A = X$ of $X$ by a measurable tile $A \subset X$ translated by a finite set $F \subset G$ of shifts, thus the translates $f \cdot A$, $f \in F$ partition $X$ up to null sets. Adapting arguments from previous literature, we establish a “dilation lemma” that asserts, roughly speaking, that $F \odot A = X$ implies $F^{r} \odot A = X$ for a large family of integer dilations $r$, and use this to establish a structure theorem for such tilings analogous to that established recently by the second and fourth authors. As applications of this theorem, we completely classify those random tilings of finitely generated abelian groups that are “factors of iid”, and show that measurable tilings of a torus ${\mathbb{T}}^{d}$ can always be continuously (in fact linearly) deformed into a tiling with rational shifts, with particularly strong results in the low-dimensional cases $d=1,2$ (in particular resolving a conjecture of Conley, the first author, and Pikhurko in the $d=1$ case).