Related papers: Application of entropy compression in pattern avoi…
A word contains a \emph{half-flip} if it contains non-empty factors $uv$ and $vu$ where $|u|=|v|$. Fici reports a non-constructive proof of the existence of an infinite word over a finite alphabet avoiding half-flips and asks for the size…
In combinatorics of words, a concatenation of $k$ consecutive equal blocks is called a power of order $k$. In this paper we take a different point of view and define an anti-power of order $k$ as a concatenation of $k$ consecutive pairwise…
A position $p$ in a word $w$ is critical if the minimal local period at $p$ is equal to the global period of $w$. According to the Critical Factorisation Theorem all words of length at least two have a critical point. We study the number…
In [1], we introduced a family of combinatorial designs, which we call "alphabet reduction pairs of arrays", ARPAs for short. These designs depend on three integer parameters $q, p \leq q, k\leq p$: $q$ is the size of the symbol set $\{0, 1…
In this paper we consider two problems concerning string factorisation. Specifically given a string $w$ and an integer $k$ find a factorisation of $w$ where each factor has length bounded by $k$ and has the minimum (the FmD problem) or the…
A word $u=u_1\dots u_n$ is a scattered factor of a word $w$ if $u$ can be obtained from $w$ by deleting some of its letters: there exist the (potentially empty) words $v_0,v_1,..,v_n$ such that $w = v_0u_1v_1...u_nv_n$. The set of all…
A \emph{tangram} is a word in which every letter occurs an even number of times. Such word can be cut into parts that can be arranged into two identical words. The minimum number of cuts needed is called the \emph{cut number} of a tangram.…
Term Coding asks: given a finite system of term identities $\Gamma$ in $v$ variables, how large can its solution set be on an $n$--element alphabet, when we are free to choose the interpretations of the function symbols? This turns familiar…
We implement a decision procedure for answering questions about a class of infinite words that might be called (for lack of a better name) "Fibonacci-automatic". This class includes, for example, the famous Fibonacci word f = 01001010...,…
We consider avoiding squares and overlaps over the natural numbers, using a greedy algorithm that chooses the least possible integer at each step; the word generated is lexicographically least among all such infinite words. In the case of…
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…
In 2005, Rampersad and the second author proved a number of theorems about infinite words x with the property that if w is any sufficiently long finite factor of x, then its reversal w^R is not a factor of x. In this note we revisit these…
An interesting phenomenon in combinatorics on words is when every recurrent word satisfying some avoidance constraints has the same factor set as a morphic word. An early example is the Hall-Thue word, fixed point of the morphism…
The avoidability of binary patterns by binary cube-free words is investigated and the exact bound between unavoidable and avoidable patterns is found. All avoidable patterns are shown to be D0L-avoidable. For avoidable patterns, the growth…
A $k$-attractor is a combinatorial object unifying dictionary-based compression. It allows to compare the repetitiveness measures of different dictionary compressors such as Lempel-Ziv 77, the Burrows-Wheeler transform, straight line…
The extension of pattern avoidance from ordinary permutations to those on multisets gave birth to several interesting enumerative results. We study permutations on regular multisets, i.e., multisets in which each element occurs the same…
A permutation $\pi$ is said to avoid a chain $(\sigma:\tau)$ of patterns if $\pi$ avoids $\sigma$ and $\pi^2$ avoids $\tau.$ In this paper, we define a notion of pattern avoidance for compositions of positive integers and use that idea to…
The complement $\overline{x}$ of a binary word $x$ is obtained by changing each $0$ in $x$ to $1$ and vice versa. We study infinite binary words $\bf w$ that avoid sufficiently large complementary factors; that is, if $x$ is a factor of…
We prove that the subvariety of $SL(2)\times SL(2)$ given by the matrix equation $w(X,Y)=\alpha$, where $w$ is a word in two letters, is closely related to an explicit smooth conic bundle over the associated `trace surface' in the…
We develop the technique of reduced word manipulation to give a range of results concerning reduced words and permutations more generally. We prove a broad connection between pattern containment and reduced words, which specializes to our…