English

The overlap gap between left-infinite and right-infinite words

Combinatorics 2018-04-30 v1

Abstract

Given two finite words uu and vv of equal length, define the \emph{overlap gap between uu and vv}, denoted og(u,v)og(u,v), as the least integer mm for which there exist words xx and xx' of length mm such that xu=vxxu=vx' or ux=xvux=x'v. Informally, the overlap gap measures the outside parts of the greatest overlap of the given words. For a left-infinite word λ\lambda and a right-infinite word ρ\rho, let ogλ,ρog_{\lambda,\rho} be the function defined, for each non-negative integer nn, by ogλ,ρ(n)=og(λn,ρn)og_{\lambda,\rho}(n)=og(\lambda_n,\rho_n), where λn\lambda_n and ρn\rho_n are, respectively, the suffix of λ\lambda and the prefix of ρ\rho of length nn. Also, denote by OGλ,ρOG_{\lambda,\rho} the image of the function ogλ,ρog_{\lambda,\rho}. In this paper, we show that OGλ,ρOG_{\lambda,\rho} is a finite set if and only if λ\lambda and ρ\rho are ultimately periodic infinite words of the form λ=uw1=uuuw1\lambda=u^{-\infty}w_1=\cdots uuuw_1 and ρ=w2u=w2uuu\rho=w_2u^\infty=w_2uuu\cdots for some finite words uu, w1w_1 and w2w_2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1804.10461,
  title  = {The overlap gap between left-infinite and right-infinite words},
  author = {J. C. Costa and C. Nogueira and M. L. Teixeira},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.10461},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:37:58.053Z