English

Complement Avoidance in Binary Words

Combinatorics 2023-03-14 v2 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

The complement x\overline{x} of a binary word xx is obtained by changing each 00 in xx to 11 and vice versa. We study infinite binary words w\bf w that avoid sufficiently large complementary factors; that is, if xx is a factor of w\bf w then x\overline{x} is not a factor of w\bf w. In particular, we classify such words according to their critical exponents.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.09598,
  title  = {Complement Avoidance in Binary Words},
  author = {James Currie and L'ubomíra Dvořaková and Pascal Ochem and Daniela Opočenská and Narad Rampersad and Jeffrey Shallit},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.09598},
  year   = {2023}
}