English

On minimal factorizations of words as products of palindromes

Combinatorics 2012-10-25 v2 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

Given a finite word u, we define its palindromic length |u|_{pal} to be the least number n such that u=v_1v_2... v_n with each v_i a palindrome. We address the following open question: Does there exist an infinite non ultimately periodic word w and a positive integer P such that |u|_{pal}<P for each factor u of w? We give a partial answer to this question by proving that if an infinite word w satisfies the so-called (k,l)-condition for some k and l, then for each positive integer P there exists a factor u of w whose palindromic length |u|_{pal}>P. In particular, the result holds for all the k-power-free words and for the Sierpinski word.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1210.6179,
  title  = {On minimal factorizations of words as products of palindromes},
  author = {Anna E. Frid and Svetlana Puzynina and Luca Zamboni},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.6179},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

13 pages, 1 figure, preliminary version reported at Journ\'ees Montoises 2012