The minimum length of an axis-aligned rectangular tiling of a flat torus

Abstract

A flat torus is the quotient of the Euclidean plane over a lattice generated by a basis, and an axis-aligned rectangular tiling of a flat torus is a partition into finitely many rectangles whose sides are axis-aligned. We provide the minimum sum of the perimeter of rectangles for an axis-aligned rectangular tiling, and prove that it is attainable by either exactly one rectangle or exactly two rectangles.