English

On a sequence of Kimberling and its relationship to the Tribonacci word

Combinatorics 2026-04-01 v5 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

In 2017, Clark Kimberling defined an interesting sequence B=0100101100{\bf B} = 0100101100 \cdots of 00's and 11's by certain inflation rules, and he made a number of conjectures about this sequence and some related ones. In this note we prove his conjectures using, in part, the Walnut theorem-prover. We show how his word is related to the infinite Tribonacci word, and we determine both the subword complexity and critical exponent of B\bf B.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.11318,
  title  = {On a sequence of Kimberling and its relationship to the Tribonacci word},
  author = {Lubomíra Dvořáková and Edita Pelantová and Jeffrey Shallit},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.11318},
  year   = {2026}
}