Dual maps have been introduced as a generalization to higher dimensions of word substitutions and free group morphisms. In this paper, we study the action of these dual maps on particular discrete planes and surfaces -- namely stepped planes and stepped surfaces. We show that dual maps can be seen as discretizations of toral automorphisms. We then provide a connection between stepped planes and the Brun multi-dimensional continued fraction algorithm, based on a desubstitution process defined on local geometric configurations of stepped planes. By extending this connection to stepped surfaces, we obtain an effective characterization of stepped planes (more exactly, stepped quasi-planes) among stepped surfaces.Comment: 37 pages, 15 figure

A substitution is a non-erasing morphism of the free monoid. The notion of multidimensional substitution of non-constant length acting on multidimensional words is proved to be well-defined on the set of two-dimensional words related to discrete approximations of irrational planes. Such a multidimensional substitution can be associated with any usual unimodular substitution. The aim of this paper is to extend the domain of definition of such multidimensional substitutions to functional stepped surfaces. One central tool for this extension is the notion of flips acting on tilings by lozenges of the plane.

Non-periodic tilings and local rules are commonly used to model the long range aperiodic order of quasicrystals and the finite-range energetic interactions that stabilize them. This paper focuses on planar rhombus tilings, that are tilings of the Euclidean plane which can be seen as an approximation of a real plane embedded in a higher dimensional space. Our main result is a characterization of the existence of local rules for such tilings when the embedding space is four-dimensional. The proof is an interplay of algebra and geometry that makes use of the rational dependencies between the coordinates of the embedded plane. We also apply this result to some cases in a higher dimensional embedding space, notably tilings with n-fold rotational symmetry.