The entropy of a language is a measure of its complexity and a well-studied dynamical invariant. I consider two related questions: for a given class of languages, can this parameter be computed, and what values can it take?

In 1D tilings (subshifts) of finite type, we have known how to compute the entropy for 30 years, and the method gives an algebraic characterisation of possible values. In higher dimension, a surprise came in 2007: not only is the entropy not computable in general, but any upper-semi-computable real number appears as entropy - a weak computational condition. Since then new works have shown that entropy becomes computable again with aditionnal mixing hypotheses. We do not know yet where the border between computable and uncomputable lies.

In this talk, I will explore the case of general subshifts (not of finite type) in any dimension, hoping to shed some light on the finite type case. I relate the computational difficulty of computing the entropy to the difficulty of deciding if a word belongs to the language. I exhibit a threshold in the mixing rate where the difficulty of the problem jumps suddenly, the very phenomenon that is expected in the finite type case.

This is a joint work with Silvère Gangloff and Cristobal Rojas.