English

Cobham's theorem for substitutions

Combinatorics 2010-10-21 v1 Discrete Mathematics Dynamical Systems

Abstract

The seminal theorem of Cobham has given rise during the last 40 years to a lot of works around non-standard numeration systems and has been extended to many contexts. In this paper, as a result of fifteen years of improvements, we obtain a complete and general version for the so-called substitutive sequences. Let α\alpha and β\beta be two multiplicatively independent Perron numbers. Then, a sequence xANx\in A^\mathbb{N}, where AA is a finite alphabet, is both α\alpha-substitutive and β\beta-substitutive if and only if xx is ultimately periodic.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1010.4009,
  title  = {Cobham's theorem for substitutions},
  author = {Fabien Durand},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.4009},
  year   = {2010}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:31:03.333Z