The number of polyiamonds is supermultiplicative

Abstract

While the number of polyominoes is known to be supermultiplicative by a simple concatenation argument, it is still unknown whether the same applies to polyiamonds. This article proves that if $\ell ,m$ are not both $1$, then $T(\ell +m)\ge T(\ell )T(m)$, for which one can say that the number of polyiamonds $T(n)$ is supermultiplicative. The method is, however, by concatenating, merging and adding cells at the same time. A corollary is an increment of the best known lower bound on the growth constant from $2.8423$ to $2.8578$.

10 pages, 11 figures; final version for publication