Aperiodic points in Z^2-subshifts

05/22/2018

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by   Anaël Grandjean, et al.

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We consider the structure of aperiodic points in Z^2-subshifts, and in particular the positions at which they fail to be periodic. We prove that if a Z^2-subshift contains points whose smallest period is arbitrarily large, then it contains an aperiodic point. This lets us characterise the computational difficulty of deciding if an Z^2-subshift of finite type contains an aperiodic point. Another consequence is that Z^2-subshifts with no aperiodic point have a very strong dynamical structure and are almost topologically conjugate to some Z-subshift. Finally, we use this result to characterize sets of possible slopes of periodicity for Z^3-subshifts of finite type.