Decomposition of Integral Self-Affine Multi-Tiles

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method to decompose an integral self-affine ${\mathbb Z}^n$-tiling set $K$ into measure disjoint pieces $K_j$ satisfying $K=\displaystyle\bigcup K_j$ in such a way that the collection of sets $K_j$ forms an integral self-affine collection associated with the matrix $B$ and this with a minimum number of pieces $K_j$. When used on a given measurable $\mathbb{Z}^n$-tiling set $K\subset\mathbb{R}^n$, this decomposition terminates after finitely many steps if and only if the set $K$ is an integral self-affine multi-tile. Furthermore, we show that the minimal decomposition we provide is unique.