Rational Angles and Tilings of the Sphere by Congruent Quadrilaterals

Abstract

We apply Diophantine analysis to classify edge-to-edge tilings of the sphere by congruent almost equilateral quadrilaterals (i.e., edge combination $$a^3b$$ a 3 b ). Parallel to a complete classification by Cheung, Luk, and Yan, the method implemented here is more systematic and applicable to other related tiling problems. We also provide detailed geometric data for the tilings.