OpenAI reports a nonperiodic translational tile in dimension three

A finite tile in ℤ³ admits a translational tiling but no fully periodic tiling; its unit-cube thickening has the same property in ℝ³ even with arbitrary real translations.

Sources for this record

What was already known

Greenfeld and Tao had disproved periodic tiling in sufficiently high dimension. The manuscript cites positive results in lower dimensions and seeks the smallest dimension of failure.

AI involvement AI-led

OpenAI credits itself as manuscript author and states that its internal frontier model produced the results in this release. Individual human input is not detailed enough to establish task-only autonomy.

OpenAI is named as author on the manuscript, and its release attributes the results to an internal frontier model. The individual human input is not detailed enough to establish autonomy.

Importance Major

Lowers a known periodic-tiling counterexample to the least possible lattice dimension, three.

Limitations

Fully periodic means invariance under a finite-index lattice subgroup; the result does not prohibit all nontrivial translation symmetries.

Technical verification Formal (Lean 4)

OpenAI reports a Lean proof matching the selected claim.

Formal checking

The pinned OpenAI Lean scope note identifies this selected claim.

Checker
OpenAI-reported Lean 4 / Comparator
Scope
A finite tile in ℤ³ admits a translational tiling but no fully periodic tiling; its unit-cube thickening has the same property in ℝ³ even with arbitrary real translations.
Basis
Reported by the linked checker
Evidence source

Checking a formal statement does not establish that it matches the original problem.

Human understanding Few

Few is the default when evidence for a higher level is insufficient. No named person is documented as explaining the central argument for this assessed contribution.

Correction and publication history

2026-10-18 · publication

Primary manuscript, attribution, prior-work, and scoped checking review for non-notifying local inclusion.

Read this published revision