Related papers: On the Minimal Uncompletable Word Problem
A word w is rich if it has |w|+1 many distinct palindromic factors, including the empty word. A word is square-free if it does not have a factor uu, where u is a non-empty word. Pelantov\'a and Starosta (Discrete Math. 313 (2013)) proved…
Given a group-word w and a group G, the verbal subgroup w(G) is the one generated by all w-values in G. The word w is said to be concise if w(G) is finite whenever the set of w-values in G is finite. In the sixties P. Hall asked whether…
Oftentimes the elements of a ring or semigroup $H$ can be written as finite products of irreducible elements, say $a=u_1 \cdot \ldots \cdot u_k = v_1 \cdot \ldots \cdot v_{\ell}$, where the number of irreducible factors is distinct. The set…
We show that, if $w_1, \ldots , w_6$ are words which are not an identity of any (non-abelian) finite simple group, then $w_1(G)w_2(G) \cdots w_6(G) = G$ for all (non-abelian) finite simple groups $G$. In particular, for every word $w$,…
A subsequence of a word $w$ is a word $u$ such that $u = w[i_1] w[i_2] \cdots w[i_k]$, for some set of indices $1 \leq i_1 < i_2 < \dots < i_k \leq \vert w \vert$. A word $w$ is \emph{$k$-subsequence universal} over an alphabet $\Sigma$ if…
Simon's congruence, denoted \sim_n, relates words having the same subwords of length up to n. We show that, over a k-letter alphabet, the number of words modulo \sim_n is in 2^{\Theta(n^{k-1} log n)}.
Finite alphabets of at least three letters permit the construction of square-free words of infinite length. We show that the entropy density is strictly positive and derive reasonable lower and upper bounds. Finally, we present an…
Let $\Gamma(G)$ be the Gruenberg-Kegel graph of a finite group $G$. We prove that if $G$ is solvable and $\sigma$ is a cut-set for $\Gamma(G)$, then $G$ has a $\sigma$-series of length $5$ whose factors are controlled. As a consequence, we…
Simon's congruence $\sim_k$ is defined as follows: two words are $\sim_k$-equivalent if they have the same set of subsequences of length at most $k$. We propose an algorithm which computes, given two words $s$ and $t$, the largest $k$ for…
In this paper we address the decision problem for a fragment of set theory with restricted quantification which extends the language studied in [4] with pair related quantifiers and constructs, in view of possible applications in the field…
We consider variations on the following problem: given an NFA M and a pattern p, does there exist an x in L(M) such that p matches x? We consider the restricted problem where M only accepts a finite language. We also consider the variation…
The topic of this paper is the Finiteness Conjecture for minimally unsatisfiable clause-sets (MUs), stating that for each fixed deficiency (number of clauses minus number of variables) there are only finitely many patterns, given a certain…
The palindromic length of the finite word $v$ is equal to the minimal number of palindromes whose concatenation is equal to $v$. It was conjectured in 2013 that for every infinite aperiodic word $x$, the palindromic length of its factors is…
Free words are elements of a free monoid, generated over an alphabet via the binary operation of concatenation. Casually speaking, a free word is a finite string of letters. Henceforth, we simply refer to them as words. Motivated by recent…
We prove that if a uniformly recurrent infinite word contains as a factor any finite permutation of words from an infinite family, then either this word is periodic, or its complexity (that is, the number of factors) grows faster than…
The set of finite words over a well-quasi-ordered set is itself well-quasi-ordered. This seminal result by Higman is a cornerstone of the theory of well-quasi-orderings and has found numerous applications in computer science. However, this…
A border of a string is a non-empty prefix of the string that is also a suffix of the string, and a string is unbordered if it has no border other than itself. Loptev, Kucherov, and Starikovskaya [CPM 2015] conjectured the following: If we…
Given a set I of word, the set of all words obtained by the shuffle of (copies of) words of I is naturally provided with a partial order. In [FS05], the authors have opened the problem of the characterization of the finite sets I such that…
A subsequence of a word $w$ is a word $u$ such that $u = w[i_1] w[i_2] , \dots w[i_{|u|}]$, for some set of indices $1 \leq i_1 < i_2 < \dots < i_k \leq |w|$. A word $w$ is $k$-subsequence universal over an alphabet $\Sigma$ if every word…
These lecture notes provide an introduction to combinatorics on words and its interactions with dynamics, algebra, and arithmetic. The central theme is the notion of low factor complexity for infinite words. We investigate the following…