Related papers: Smooth infinite words over $n$-letter alphabets ha…
We study the relation between the palindromic and factor complexity of infinite words. We show that for uniformly recurrent words one has P(n)+P(n+1) \leq \Delta C(n) + 2, for all n \in N. For a large class of words it is a better estimate…
We consider in general two-block substitutions and their fixed points. We prove that some of them have a simple structure: their fixed points are morphic sequences. Others are intrinsically more complex, such as the Kolakoski sequence. We…
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…
In combinatorics on words, a word w of length n over an alphabet of size q is said to be privileged if n <= 1 or if n >= 2 and w has a privileged border that occurs exactly twice in w. Forsyth, Jayakumar and Shallit proved that there exist…
A word is called closed if it has a prefix which is also its suffix and there is no internal occurrences of this prefix in the word. In this paper we study words that are rich in closed factors, i.e., which contain the maximal possible…
The Kolakoski sequence is the unique infinite sequence with values in $\{1, 2\}$ and first term twems $1, 2, \ldots$ which equals the sequence of run-lengths of itself, we call this $K(1, 2).$ We define $K(m, n)$ similarly for $m+n$ odd. A…
We show that the number of length-n words over a k-letter alphabet having no even palindromic prefix is the same as the number of length-n unbordered words, by constructing an explicit bijection between the two sets. A slightly different…
We study decompositions of words into subwords that are in some sense similar, which means that one subword may be obtained from the other by a relatively simple transformation. Our main inspiration are shuffle squares, an intriguing class…
Let $\mathcal{SS}_k(n)$ be the family of {\it shuffle squares} in $[k]^{2n}$, words that can be partitioned into two disjoint identical subsequences. Let $\mathcal{RSS}_k(n)$ be the family of {\it reverse shuffle squares} in $[k]^{2n}$,…
We prove that, for any pure morphic word $w$, if the frequencies of all letters in $w$ exist, then the frequencies of all factors in $w$ exist as well. This result answers a question of Saari in his doctoral thesis.
A word is closed if it contains a proper factor that occurs both as a prefix and as a suffix but does not have internal occurrences, otherwise it is open. We deal with the sequence of open and closed prefixes of Sturmian words and prove…
We consider the following problem. Let us fix a finite alphabet A; for any given d-uple of letter frequencies, how to construct an infinite word u over the alphabet A satisfying the following conditions: u has linear complexity function, u…
We study the $k$-Bonacci word over the infinite alphabet $\mathbb{N}$. Since the alphabet is infinite, the usual factor complexity is infinite and does not provide any information. We therefore investigate factor occurrence statistics in…
Solving a problem by Erd\H{o}s, we prove that every positive integer $n$ can be written as a sum $$n = b_{1} + b_{2} + \ldots + b_{r}$$ of distinct $3$-smooth integers with $1 \le b_{1} < b_{2} < \ldots < b_{r} < 6b_{1}$.
An abelian square is the concatenation of two words that are anagrams of one another. A word of length $n$ can contain at most $\Theta(n^2)$ distinct factors, and there exist words of length $n$ containing $\Theta(n^2)$ distinct…
It is well known that Sturmian sequences are the aperiodic sequences that are balanced over a 2-letter alphabet. They are also characterized by their complexity: they have exactly $(n+1)$ factors of length $n$. One possible generalization…
Given a set of $t$ words of length $n$ over a $k$-letter alphabet, it is proved that there exists a common subsequence among two of them of length at least $\frac{n}{k}+cn^{1-1/(t-k-2)}$, for some $c>0$ depending on $k$ and $t$. This is…
A large family of words must contain two words that are similar. We investigate several problems where the measure of similarity is the length of a common subsequence. We construct a family of n^{1/3} permutations on n letters, such that…
This paper introduces a simple Markov process inspired by the problem of quasicrystal growth. It acts over two-letter words by randomly performing \emph{flips}, a local transformation which exchanges two consecutive different letters. More…
In this paper, we construct a uniformely recurrent infinite word of low complexity without uniform frequencies of letters. This shows the optimality of a bound of Boshernitzan, which gives a sufficient condition for a uniformly recurrent…