Affine congruence by dissection of discs - appropriate groups and optimal dissections

Let be a group of affine transformations of the Euclidean plane . Two topological discs D, are called congruent by dissection with respect to if D can be dissected into a finite number of subdiscs that can be rearranged by maps from to a dissection of E. Our main result says in particular that admits congruence by dissection of any circular disc C with any square S if and only if contains a contractive map and all orbits , , are dense in . In this case any two discs D and E are congruent by dissection with respect to and every disc D is congruent by dissection with n copies of D for every n ≥ 2. Moreover, we give estimates on minimal numbers of pieces that are needed to realize congruences by dissection. Dedicated to Irmtraud Stephani on the occasion of her 70th birthday