English

Doubled patterns are $3$-avoidable

Discrete Mathematics 2015-10-08 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

In combinatorics on words, a word ww over an alphabet Σ\Sigma is said to avoid a pattern pp over an alphabet Δ\Delta if there is no factor ff of ww such that f=h(p)f=h(p) where h:ΔΣh:\Delta^*\to\Sigma^* is a non-erasing morphism. A pattern pp is said to be kk-avoidable if there exists an infinite word over a kk-letter alphabet that avoids pp. A pattern is said to be doubled if no variable occurs only once. Doubled patterns with at most 3 variables and patterns with at least 6 variables are 33-avoidable. We show that doubled patterns with 4 and 5 variables are also 33-avoidable.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1510.01753,
  title  = {Doubled patterns are $3$-avoidable},
  author = {Pascal Ochem},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1510.01753},
  year   = {2015}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T11:14:20.102Z