Quasicrystalline Gibbs states in 4-dimensional lattice-gas models with finite-range interactions

Abstract

We construct a four-dimensional lattice-gas model with finite-range interactions that has non-periodic, ``quasicrystalline'' Gibbs states at low temperatures. Such Gibbs states are probability measures which are small perturbations of non-periodic ground-state configurations corresponding to tilings of the plane with Ammann's aperiodic tiles. Our construction is based on the correspondence between probabilistic cellular automata and Gibbs measures on their space-time trajectories, and a classical result on noise-resilient computing with cellular automata. The cellular automaton is constructed on the basis of Ammann's tiles, which are deterministic in one direction, and has non-periodic space-time trajectories corresponding to each valid tiling. Repetitions along two extra dimensions, together with an error-correction mechanism, ensure stability of the trajectories subjected to noise.