English

Palindromes in infinite ternary words

Combinatorics 2013-02-12 v1

Abstract

We study infinite words u over an alphabet A satisfying the property P : P(n)+ P(n+1) = 1+ #A for any n in N, where P(n) denotes the number of palindromic factors of length n occurring in the language of u. We study also infinite words satisfying a stronger property PE: every palindrome of u has exactly one palindromic extension in u. For binary words, the properties P and PE coincide and these properties characterize Sturmian words, i.e., words with the complexity C(n)=n+1 for any n in N. In this paper, we focus on ternary infinite words with the language closed under reversal. For such words u, we prove that if C(n)=2n+1 for any n in N, then u satisfies the property P and moreover u is rich in palindromes. Also a sufficient condition for the property PE is given. We construct a word demonstrating that P on a ternary alphabet does not imply PE.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0901.4261,
  title  = {Palindromes in infinite ternary words},
  author = {Lubomira Balkova and Edita Pelantova and Stepan Starosta},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0901.4261},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

12 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:05:08.632Z