Asymptotic structure in substitution tiling spaces

Every sufficiently regular non-periodic space of tilings of $\mathbb {R}^d$ has at least one pair of distinct tilings that are asymptotic under translation in all the directions of some open $(d-1)$-dimensional hemisphere. If the tiling space comes from a substitution, there is a way of defining a location on such tilings at which asymptoticity ‘starts’. This leads to the definition of the branch locus of the tiling space: this is a subspace of the tiling space, of dimension at most $d-1$, that summarizes the ‘asymptotic in at least a half-space’ behavior in the tiling space. We prove that if a $d$-dimensional self-similar substitution tiling space has a pair of distinct tilings that are asymptotic in a set of directions that contains a closed $(d-1)$-hemisphere in its interior, then the branch locus is a topological invariant of the tiling space. If the tiling space is a two-dimensional self-similar Pisot substitution tiling space, the branch locus has a description as an inverse limit of an expanding Markov map on a zero- or one-dimensional simplicial complex.