English

Lyndon pairs and the lexicographically greatest perfect necklace

Combinatorics 2025-02-12 v2 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

Fix a finite alphabet. A necklace is a circular word. For positive integers nn and~kk, a necklace is (n,k)(n,k)-perfect if all words of length nn occur kk times but at positions with different congruence modulo kk, for any convention of the starting position. We define the notion of a Lyndon pair and we use it to construct the lexicographically greatest (n,k)(n,k)-perfect necklace, for any nn and kk such that nn divides~kk or kk divides~nn. Our construction generalizes Fredricksen and Maiorana's construction of the lexicographically greatest de Bruijn sequence of order nn, based on the concatenation of the Lyndon words whose length divide nn.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.17812,
  title  = {Lyndon pairs and the lexicographically greatest perfect necklace},
  author = {Verónica Becher and Tomás Tropea},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.17812},
  year   = {2025}
}