Tilings of the plane and Thurston semi-norm

We show that the problem of tiling the Euclidean plane with a finite set of polygons (up to translation) boils down to prove the existence of zeros of a non-negative convex function defined on a finite-dimensional simplex. This function is a generalisation, in the framework of branched surfaces, of the Thurston semi-norm originally defined for compact 3\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$3$$\end{document}-manifolds.