Related papers: Generalized trapezoidal words
We construct an infinite word $w$ over the $5$-letter alphabet such that for every factor $f$ of $w$ of length at least two, there exists a cyclic permutation of $f$ that is not a factor of $w$. In other words, $w$ does not contain a…
A binary word is a map W : N --> {0,1}, and the set of factors of W with length n is F_n(W):={(W(i),W(i+1),...,W(i+n-1)) : i >= 0}. A word is Sturmian if |F_n(W)|=n+1 for every n>0. We show that the sum of the heights (also known as hamming…
To any infinite word w over a finite alphabet A we can associate two infinite words min(w) and max(w) such that any prefix of min(w) (resp. max(w)) is the lexicographically smallest (resp. greatest) amongst the factors of w of the same…
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…
A factor $u$ of a word $w$ is a cover of $w$ if every position in $w$ lies within some occurrence of $u$ in $w$. A word $w$ covered by $u$ thus generalizes the idea of a repetition, that is, a word composed of exact concatenations of $u$.…
A finite word $w$ with $\vert w\vert=n$ contains at most $n+1$ distinct palindromic factors. If the bound $n+1$ is attained, the word $w$ is called \emph{rich}. Let $\Factor(w)$ be the set of factors of the word $w$. It is known that there…
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…
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…
The relationship between the length of a word and the maximum length of its unbordered factors is investigated in this paper. Consider a finite word w of length n. We call a word bordered, if it has a proper prefix which is also a suffix of…
We study word reconstruction problems. Improving a previous result by P. Fleischmann, M. Lejeune, F. Manea, D. Nowotka and M. Rigo, we prove that, for any unknown word $w$ of length $n$ over an alphabet of cardinality $k$, $w$ can be…
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 introduce the notion of $\alpha$-numbers and formal intercept of sturmian words, and derive from this study general factorisations formula for sturmian words. Sturmian words are defined as infinite words with lowest unbound complexity,…
In this paper, we characterize by lexicographic order all finite Sturmian and episturmian words, i.e., all (finite) factors of such infinite words. Consequently, we obtain a characterization of infinite episturmian words in a "wide sense"…
Let $w$ be a finite word of length $n$. In this paper, we study the maximum possible number of distinct rational power factors in a finite word. A rational power is a word of the form $u=p^kp'$, where $p$ is a nonempty finite word, $k$ is…
We prove that if a uniformly recurrent infinite word contains as a factor any finite permutation of words from an infinite family, then either this word is periodic, or its complexity (that is, the number of factors) grows faster than…
Let $f_W(n)$ be the number of different factors of length $n$ appearing in $W$. A classical result of Morse and Hedlund, stated in 1938, asserts that an infinite word $W$ is ultimately periodic if and only if $f_W(n)\leq n$ for some $n\in…
A {\em square} is a word of the form $uu$. In this paper we prove that for a given finite word $w$, the number of distinct square factors of $w$ is bounded by $|w|-|\Alphabet(w)|+1$, where $|w|$ denotes the length of $w$ and…
Frobenius observed that the number of times an element of a finite group is obtained as a commutator is given by a specific combination of the irreducible characters of the group. More generally, for any word w the number of times an…
The study of verbal subgroups within a group is well-known for being an effective tool to obtain structural information about a group. Therefore, conditions that allow the classification of words in a free group are of paramount importance.…
In this paper, we study the relation between periodicity of two-dimensional words and their abelian pattern complexity. A pattern $\cal{P}$ in $\mathbb{Z}^n$ is the set of all translations of some finite subset $F$ of $\mathbb{Z}^n$. An…