Related papers: A regularity lemma and twins in words

We prove two results about width of words in $SL_n(\mathbb{Z})$. The first is that, for every $n \geq 3$, there is a constant $C(n)$ such that the width of any word in $SL_n(\mathbb{Z})$ is less than $C(n)$. The second result is that, for…

Word $W$ is said to encounter word $V$ provided there is a homomorphism $\phi$ mapping letters to nonempty words so that $\phi(V)$ is a substring of $W$. For example, taking $\phi$ such that $\phi(h)=c$ and $\phi(u)=ien$, we see that…

We investigate the scattered palindromic subwords in a finite word. We start by characterizing the words with the least number of scattered palindromic subwords. Then, we give an upper bound for the total number of palindromic subwords in a…

We prove that every $n$-letter word over $k$-letter alphabet contains some word as a subsequence in at least $k^{n/4k(1+o(1))}$ many ways, and that this is sharp as $k\to\infty$. For fixed $k$, we show that the analogous number deviates…

Piecewise testable languages are a subclass of the regular languages. There are many equivalent ways of defining them; Simon's congruence $\sim_k$ is one of the most classical approaches. Two words are $\sim_k$-equivalent if they have the…

Given a regular language L over an ordered alphabet $\Sigma$, the set of lexicographically smallest (resp., largest) words of each length is itself regular. Moreover, there exists an unambiguous finite-state transducer that, on a given word…

We show that the number of prefix normal binary words of length $n$ is $2^{n-\Theta((\log n)^2)}$. We also show that the maximum number of binary words of length $n$ with a given fixed prefix normal form is $2^{n-O(\sqrt{n\log n})}$.

We study the following rearrangement problem: Given $n$ words, rearrange and concatenate them so that the obtained string is lexicographically smallest (or largest, respectively). We show that this problem reduces to sorting the given words…

The deletion distance between two binary words $u,v \in \{0,1\}^n$ is the smallest $k$ such that $u$ and $v$ share a common subsequence of length $n-k$. A set $C$ of binary words of length $n$ is called a $k$-deletion code if every pair of…

The binomial notation (w u) represents the number of occurrences of the word u as a (scattered) subword in w. We first introduce and study possible uses of a geometrical interpretation of (w ab) and (w ba) when a and b are distinct letters.…

Separation is a classical problem asking whether, given two sets belonging to some class, it is possible to separate them by a set from a smaller class. We discuss the separation problem for regular languages. We give a Ptime algorithm to…

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…

Let $R(n)$ denote the number of rich words of length $n$ over a given finite alphabet. In 2017 it was proved that $\lim_{n\rightarrow\infty} \sqrt[n]{R(n)}=1$; it means the number of rich words has a subexponential growth. However, up to…

Let $L_{K}(A)$ be the free Lie algebra on a finite alphabet $A$ over a commutative ring $K$ with unity. For a word $u$ in the free monoid $A^{*}$ let $\tilde{u}$ denote its reversal. Two words in $A^{*}$ are called twin (resp. anti-twin) if…

A prefix normal word is a binary word with the property that no substring has more 1s than the prefix of the same length. This class of words is important in the context of binary jumbled pattern matching. In this paper we present results…

Let $x$ and $y$ be words. We consider the languages whose words $z$ are those for which the numbers of occurrences of $x$ and $y$, as subwords of $z$, are the same (resp., the number of $x$'s is less than the number of $y$'s, resp., is less…

An occurrence of a repeated substring $u$ in a string $S$ is called a net occurrence if extending the occurrence to the left or to the right decreases the number of occurrences to 1. The net frequency (NF) of a repeated substring $u$ in a…

Separation is a classical problem in mathematics and computer science. It asks whether, given two sets belonging to some class, it is possible to separate them by another set of a smaller class. We present and discuss the separation problem…

We prove lower bounds on the length of regular expressions for finite languages by methods from arithmetic circuit complexity. First, we show a reduction: the length of a regular expression for a language $L\subseteq \{0,1\}^n$ is bounded…

The separating words problem asks for the size of the smallest DFA needed to distinguish between two words of length <= n (by accepting one and rejecting the other). In this paper we survey what is known and unknown about the problem,…