Related papers: Composing short 3-compressing words on a 2 letter …
Carpi (1993) and Lepisto (1994) proved independently that smooth words are cube-free for the alphabet {1, 2}, but nothing is known on whether for the other 2-letter alphabets, smooth words are k-power-free for some suitable positive integer…
We consider the asymptotic minimum density $f(s,k)$ of monotone $k$-subwords of words over a totally ordered alphabet of size $s$. The unrestricted alphabet case, $f(\infty,k)$, is well-studied, known for $f(\infty,3)$ and $f(\infty,4)$,…
This paper concerns $\mu$-limit sets of cellular automata: sets of configurations made of words whose probability to appear does not vanish with time, starting from an initial $\mu$-random configuration. More precisely, we investigate the…
Given a finite alphabet $\Sigma$ and a right-infinite word $\bf w$ over $\Sigma$, we define the Lie complexity function $L_{\bf w}:\mathbb{N}\to \mathbb{N}$, whose value at $n$ is the number of conjugacy classes (under cyclic shift) of…
Given a subset of states $S$ of a deterministic finite automaton and a word $w$, the preimage is the subset of all states mapped to a state in $S$ by the action of $w$. We study three natural problems concerning words giving certain…
For any synchronizing $n$-state deterministic automaton, \v{C}ern\'{y} conjectures the existence of a synchronizing word of length at most $(n-1)^2$. We prove that there exists a synchronizing word of length at most $2n^2 - 7n + 7$ for…
We extend results regarding a combinatorial model introduced by Black, Drellich, and Tymoczko (2017+) which generalizes the folding of the RNA molecule in biology. Consider a word on alphabet $\{A_1, \overline{A}_1, \ldots, A_m,…
A deterministic finite automaton (DFA) separates two strings $w$ and $x$ if it accepts $w$ and rejects $x$. The minimum number of states required for a DFA to separate $w$ and $x$ is denoted by $sep(w,x)$. The present paper shows that the…
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)}.
The compact directed acyclic word graph (CDAWG) [Blumer et al. 1987] of a string is the minimal compact automaton that recognizes all the suffixes of the string. CDAWGs can be used for various string tasks including text pattern searching,…
Minimizers are sampling schemes with numerous applications in computational biology. Assuming a fixed alphabet of size $\sigma$, a minimizer is defined by two integers $k,w\ge2$ and a linear order $\rho$ on strings of length $k$ (also…
A deterministic finite automaton (DFA) is composite if its language can be decomposed into an intersection of languages of smaller DFAs. Otherwise, A is prime. This notion of primality was introduced by Kupferman and Mosheiff in 2013, and…
In combinatorics on words, a word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is said to avoid a pattern $p$ over an alphabet $\Delta$ of variables if there is no factor $f$ of $w$ such that $f=h(p)$ where $h:\Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing…
Minimizing the size of finite automata is a fundamental problem in theoretical computer science. Beyond standard minimization, further reductions can be achieved by decomposing an automaton into smaller components whose languages combine…
A word~$w$ has a border $u$ if $u$ is a non-empty proper prefix and suffix of $u$. A word~$w$ is said to be \emph{closed} if $w$ is of length at most $1$ or if $w$ has a border that occurs exactly twice in $w$. A word~$w$ is said to be…
Decidability of the determinization problem for weighted automata over the semiring $(\mathbb{Z} \cup {-\infty}, \max, +)$, WA for short, is a long-standing open question. We propose two ways of approaching it by constraining the search…
For $0<\delta <1$ a $\delta$-subrepetition in a word is a factor which exponent is less than~2 but is not less than $1+\delta$ (the exponent of the factor is the ratio of the factor length to its minimal period). The $\delta$-subrepetition…
A word is "crucial" with respect to a given set of "prohibited words" (or simply "prohibitions") if it avoids the prohibitions but it cannot be extended to the right by any letter of its alphabet without creating a prohibition. A "minimal…
The subword complexity of a word $w$ over a finite alphabet $\mathcal{A}$ is a function that assigns for each positive integer $n$, the number of distinct subwords of length $n$ in $w$. The subword complexity of a word is a good measure of…
Words are sequences of letters over a finite alphabet. We study two intimately related topics for this object: quasi-randomness and limit theory. With respect to the first topic we investigate the notion of uniform distribution of letters…