English

On monochromatic arithmetic progressions in binary words associated with pattern sequences

Combinatorics 2023-07-19 v2 Number Theory

Abstract

Let ev(n)e_v(n) denote the number of occurrences of a fixed pattern vv in the binary expansion of nNn \in \mathbb{N}. In this paper we study monochromatic arithmetic progressions in the class of binary words (ev(n)mod2)n0(e_v(n) \bmod{2})_{n \geq 0}, which includes the famous Thue--Morse word t\mathbf{t} and Rudin--Shapiro word r\mathbf{r}. We prove that the length of a monochromatic arithmetic progression of difference d3d \geq 3 starting at 00 in r\mathbf{r} is at most (d+3)/2(d+3)/2, with equality for infinitely many dd. Moreover, we compute the maximal length of a monochromatic arithmetic progression in r\mathbf{r} of difference 2k12^k-1 and 2k+12^k+1. For a general pattern vv we provide an upper bound on the length of a monochromatic arithmetic progression of any difference dd. We also prove other miscellaneous results and offer a number of related problems and conjectures.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.05287,
  title  = {On monochromatic arithmetic progressions in binary words associated with pattern sequences},
  author = {Bartosz Sobolewski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.05287},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

31 pages, 3 figures. Slightly changed the title and abstract, added references and additional comments in Section 1, merged Sections 3 and 4 into one and rewrote the proofs in there

R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:44:51.782Z