Homemath.COarXiv:2605.29853

Pairs of square-free arithmetic progressions in infinite words

math.CO2026-05v1license

Abstract

We study a question of Harju from 2019 regarding the existence of infinite ternary square-free words whose subsequences modulo pp and qq are also square-free for relatively prime integers pp and qq. Among such pairs (p,q)(p, q) with p,q3p, q \geq 3, the only two pairs with this property known prior to this work were (3,11)(3, 11) and (5,6)(5, 6). We prove that there are finitely many pairs (p,q)(p, q) of relatively prime integers with p,q3p, q \geq 3 for which there is no infinite ternary square-free word whose subsequences modulo pp and qq are square-free. To prove our result, we combine different techniques, including the construction of words from multi-valued square-free morphisms and circular square-free morphisms. We also introduce the notion of square-free transducers, a generalization of square-free morphisms that may be of independent interest.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.29853,
  title  = {Pairs of square-free arithmetic progressions in infinite words},
  author = {Thomas Delépine and Pascal Ochem and Matthieu Rosenfeld},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.29853},
  year   = {2026}
}