Conformal tilings, combinatorial curvature, and the type problem

Abstract

Roughly, a conformal tiling of a Riemann surface is a tiling where each tile is a suitable conformal image of a Euclidean regular polygon. In 1997, Bowers and Stephenson constructed an edge-to-edge conformal tiling of the complex plane using conformally regular pentagons. In contrast, we show that for all $n\ge 7$, there is no edge-to-edge conformal tiling of the complex plane using conformally regular $n$-gons. More generally, we discuss a relationship between the combinatorial curvature at each vertex of the conformal tiling and the universal cover (sphere, plane, or disc) of the underlying Riemann surface. This result follows from the work of Stone (1976) and Oh (2005) through a rich interplay between Riemannian geometry and combinatorial geometry. We provide an exposition of these proofs and some new applications to conformal tilings.