English

Circular repetition thresholds on some small alphabets: Last cases of Gorbunova's conjecture

Combinatorics 2018-10-05 v2 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

A word is called β\beta-free if it has no factors of exponent greater than or equal to β\beta. The repetition threshold RT(k)\mathrm{RT}(k) is the infimum of the set of all β\beta such that there are arbitrarily long kk-ary β\beta-free words (or equivalently, there are kk-ary β\beta-free words of every sufficiently large length, or even every length). These three equivalent definitions of the repetition threshold give rise to three natural definitions of a repetition threshold for circular words. The infimum of the set of all β\beta such that - there are arbitrarily long kk-ary β\beta-free circular words is called the weak circular repetition threshold, denoted CRTW(k)\mathrm{CRT}_{\mathrm{W}}(k); - there are kk-ary β\beta-free circular words of every sufficiently large length is called the intermediate circular repetition threshold, denoted CRTI(k)\mathrm{CRT}_{\mathrm{I}}(k); - there are kk-ary β\beta-free circular words of every length is called the strong circular repetition threshold, denoted CRTS(k)\mathrm{CRT}_{\mathrm{S}}(k). We prove that CRTS(4)=32\mathrm{CRT}_{\mathrm{S}}(4)=\tfrac{3}{2} and CRTS(5)=43\mathrm{CRT}_{\mathrm{S}}(5)=\tfrac{4}{3}, confirming a conjecture of Gorbunova and providing the last unknown values of the strong circular repetition threshold. We also prove that CRTI(3)=CRTW(3)=RT(3)=74\mathrm{CRT}_{\mathrm{I}}(3)=\mathrm{CRT}_{\mathrm{W}}(3)=\mathrm{RT}(3)=\tfrac{7}{4}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1803.08145,
  title  = {Circular repetition thresholds on some small alphabets: Last cases of Gorbunova's conjecture},
  author = {James D. Currie and Lucas Mol and Narad Rampersad},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.08145},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

27 pages (including a 6 page appendix). As promised in an earlier version, we have added a proof that the strong circular repetition threshold for five letters is 4/3, completing the last case of Gorbunova's conjecture