The overlap gap between left-infinite and right-infinite words
Combinatorics
2018-04-30 v1
Abstract
Given two finite words and of equal length, define the \emph{overlap gap between and }, denoted , as the least integer for which there exist words and of length such that or . Informally, the overlap gap measures the outside parts of the greatest overlap of the given words. For a left-infinite word and a right-infinite word , let be the function defined, for each non-negative integer , by , where and are, respectively, the suffix of and the prefix of of length . Also, denote by the image of the function . In this paper, we show that is a finite set if and only if and are ultimately periodic infinite words of the form and for some finite words , and .
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}
}