A characterization of Gabor Riesz bases with separable time-frequency shifts

A Gabor system generated by a window function $g\in L^2(\mathbb{R}^d)$ and a separable set $Λ\times Γ\subset \mathbb{R}^{2d}$ is the collection of time-frequency shifts of $g$ given by $\mathcal G(g, Λ\times Γ) = \left\{ e^{2πi ξ\cdot t}g(t-x)\right\}_{ (x,ξ)\in Λ\times Γ}$. One of the fundamental problems in Gabor analysis is to characterize all windows and time-frequency sets that generate a Gabor frame or Gabor orthonormal basis. The case of Gabor orthonormal bases generated by characteristic functions $g=χ_Ω$ has been solved by Han and Wang. In this paper, we build on these results and obtain a full characterization of Riesz Gabor systems of the form $\mathcal G(χ_Ω, Λ\times Γ)$ when $Ω$ is a tiling of $\mathbb{R}^d$ with respect to $Λ$. Furthermore, for a certain class of lattices $Λ\times Γ$, we prove that a necessary condition for the characteristic function of a multi-tiling set to serve as a window function for a Riesz Gabor basis is that the set must be a tiling set. To prove this, we develop new results on the zeros of the Zak transform and connect these results to Gabor frames.