English

Subword complexity and power avoidance

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2020-07-07 v1 Discrete Mathematics Combinatorics

Abstract

We begin a systematic study of the relations between subword complexity of infinite words and their power avoidance. Among other things, we show that -- the Thue-Morse word has the minimum possible subword complexity over all overlap-free binary words and all (73)(\frac 73)-power-free binary words, but not over all (73)+(\frac 73)^+-power-free binary words; -- the twisted Thue-Morse word has the maximum possible subword complexity over all overlap-free binary words, but no word has the maximum subword complexity over all (73)(\frac 73)-power-free binary words; -- if some word attains the minimum possible subword complexity over all square-free ternary words, then one such word is the ternary Thue word; -- the recently constructed 1-2-bonacci word has the minimum possible subword complexity over all \textit{symmetric} square-free ternary words.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1801.05376,
  title  = {Subword complexity and power avoidance},
  author = {Jeffrey Shallit and Arseny M. Shur},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.05376},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

29 pages. Submitted to TCS