Related papers: Extremal words in morphic subshifts
We consider first-order logic over the subword ordering on finite words, where each word is available as a constant. Our first result is that the $\Sigma_1$ theory is undecidable (already over two letters). We investigate the decidability…
A relational structure $\mathbb{X}$ is called reversible iff each bijective homomorphism from $\mathbb{X}$ onto $\mathbb{X}$ is an isomorphism, and linear orders are prototypical examples of such structures. One way to detect new reversible…
Let u be a cyclic word in a free group F_n of finite rank n that has the minimum length over all cyclic words in its automorphic orbit, and let N(u) be the cardinality of the set {v: |v|=|u| and v= \phi(u) for some \phi \in \text {Aut}F_n}.…
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…
A subgroup of a finite group G is said to be second maximal if it is maximal in every maximal subgroup of G that contains it. A question which has received considerable attention asks: can every positive integer occur as the number of the…
We study the equality problem for infinite words obtained by iterating morphisms. In particular, we give a practical algorithm to decide whether or not two words generated by primitive morphisms are equal.
A word is square-free if it does not contain nonempty factors of the form $XX$. In 1906 Thue proved that there exist arbitrarily long square-free words over a $3$-letter alphabet. It was proved recently [7] that among these words there are…
In this paper we answer two recent questions from Charlier et al. and Harju about self-shuffling words. An infinite word $w$ is called self-shuffling, if $w=\prod_{i=0}^\infty U_iV_i=\prod_{i=0}^\infty U_i=\prod_{i=0}^\infty V_i$ for some…
We begin by establishing two fundamental results on standard parabolic subgroups of virtual Artin groups. We first show that a standard parabolic subgroup is naturally isomorphic to a virtual Artin group. Second, we prove that the…
A universal word for a finite alphabet $A$ and some integer $n\geq 1$ is a word over $A$ such that every word in $A^n$ appears exactly once as a subword (cyclically or linearly). It is well-known and easy to prove that universal words exist…
In our earlier paper [A square root map on Sturmian words, Electron. J. Combin. 24.1 (2017)], we introduced a symbolic square root map. Every optimal squareful infinite word $s$ contains exactly six minimal squares and can be written as a…
In a 1983 paper, G. Ramharter asks what are the extremal arrangements for the cyclic analogues of the regular and semi-regular continuants first introduced by T.S. Motzkin and E.G. Straus in 1956. In this paper we answer this question by…
We classify minimal pairs (X, G) for smooth rational projective surface X and finite group G of automorphisms on X. We also determine the fixed locus X^G and the quotient surface Y = X/G as well as the fundamental group of the smooth part…
We consider several novel aspects of unique factorization in formal languages. We reprove the familiar fact that the set uf(L) of words having unique factorization into elements of L is regular if L is regular, and from this deduce an…
Given an infinite linear group with a finite set of generators, we show that the shortest word length of an element of infinite order has an upper bound that depends only on the number of generators and the degree. This provides a…
There are various results in the literature which are part of the general philosophy that a finite group for which a certain parameter (for example, the number of conjugacy classes or the maximum number of elements inverted, squared or…
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…
We give a ranker-based description using finite-index congruences for the variety $\boldsymbol{\mathrm{DAb}}$ of finite monoids whose regular $\mathcal{D}$-classes form Abelian groups. This combinatorial description yields a normal form for…
In this paper, we investigate the structure of the most general kind of substitution shifts, including non-minimal ones, and allowing erasing morphisms. We prove the decidability of many properties of these morphisms with respect to the…
Answering a question of G. Fici, we give an $S$-adic characterization of thefamily of infinite LSP words, that is, the family of infinite words having all their left special factors as prefixes.More precisely we provide a finite set of…