English

A new characteristic property of rich words

Combinatorics 2010-03-16 v1 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

Originally introduced and studied by the third and fourth authors together with J. Justin and S. Widmer in arXiv:0801.1656, rich words constitute a new class of finite and infinite words characterized by containing the maximal number of distinct palindromes. Several characterizations of rich words have already been established. A particularly nice characteristic property is that all 'complete returns' to palindromes are palindromes. In this note, we prove that rich words are also characterized by the property that each factor is uniquely determined by its longest palindromic prefix and its longest palindromic suffix.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0807.2303,
  title  = {A new characteristic property of rich words},
  author = {Michelangelo Bucci and Alessandro De Luca and Amy Glen and Luca Q. Zamboni},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.2303},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

6 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:00:33.359Z