Moduli of Parallelogram Tilings and Curve Systems

Abstract

We determine the topology of the moduli space of periodic tilings of the plane by parallelograms. To each such tiling, we associate combinatorial data via the zone curves of the tiling. We show that all tilings with the same combinatorial data form an open subset in a suitable Euclidean space that is homotopy equivalent to a circle. Moreover, for any choice of combinatorial data, we construct a canonical tiling with these data.