Related papers: Fewer runs than word length
This paper introduces an abstract notion of fragments of monadic second-order logic. This concept is based on purely syntactic closure properties. We show that over finite words, every logical fragment defines a lattice of languages with…
We present upper bounds on certain sums which are related to Artin's primitive root conjecture and are also used in counting ray class characters.
The lonely runner conjecture of Wills and Cusick, in its most popular formulation, asserts that if $n$ runners with distinct constant speeds run around a unit circle ${\bf R}/{\bf Z}$ starting at a common time and place, then each runner…
In this paper we propose a new, more appropriate definition of regular and indeterminate strings. A regular string is one that is "isomorphic" to a string whose entries all consist of a single letter, but which nevertheless may itself…
We pose thirty conjectures on arithmetical sequences, most of which are about monotonicity of sequences of the form $(\root n\of{a_n})_{n\ge 1}$ or the form $(\root{n+1}\of{a_{n+1}}/\root n\of{a_n})_{n\ge1}$, where $(a_n)_{n\ge 1}$ is a…
A double occurrence word $w$ over a finite alphabet $\Sigma$ is a word in which each alphabet letter appears exactly twice. Such words arise naturally in the study of topology, graph theory, and combinatorics. Recently, double occurrence…
Minimal forbidden factors are a useful tool for investigating properties of words and languages. Two factorial languages are distinct if and only if they have different (antifactorial) sets of minimal forbidden factors. There exist…
We prove that $\det A\leq 6^\frac{n}{6}$ whenever $A\in\{0,1\}^{n\times n}$ contains at most $2n$ ones. We also prove an upper bound on the determinant of matrices with the $k$-consecutive ones property, a generalisation of the consecutive…
The repetition threshold for words on $n$ letters, denoted $\mbox{RT}(n)$, is the infimum of the set of all $r$ such that there are arbitrarily long $r$-free words over $n$ letters. A repetition threshold for circular words on $n$ letters…
Free words are elements of a free monoid, generated over an alphabet via the binary operation of concatenation. Casually speaking, a free word is a finite string of letters. Henceforth, we simply refer to them as words. Motivated by recent…
Building an infinite square-free word by appending one letter at a time while simultaneously avoiding the creation of squares is most likely to fail. When the alphabet has two letters this approach is impossible. When the alphabet has three…
The problem addressed concerns the determination of the average number of successive attempts of guessing a word of a certain length consisting of letters with given probabilities of occurrence. Both first- and second-order approximations…
We present a new class of binary words: the prefix normal words. They are defined by the property that for any given length $k$, no factor of length $k$ has more $a$'s than the prefix of the same length. These words arise in the context of…
Upper bounds on the maximum number of codewords in a binary code of a given length and minimum Hamming distance are considered. New bounds are derived by a combination of linear programming and counting arguments. Some of these bounds…
Logic languages based on the theory of rational, possibly infinite, trees have much appeal in that rational trees allow for faster unification (due to the safe omission of the occurs-check) and increased expressivity (cyclic terms can…
A word of length $n$ is rich if it contains $n$ nonempty palindromic factors. An infinite word is rich if all of its finite factors are rich. Baranwal and Shallit produced an infinite binary rich word with critical exponent $2+\sqrt{2}/2$…
Superpermutations are words over a finite alphabet containing every permutation as a factor. Finding the minimal length of a superpermutation is still an open problem. In this article, we introduce superpermutations matrices. We establish a…
A word is closed if it contains a proper factor that occurs both as a prefix and as a suffix but does not have internal occurrences, otherwise it is open. We deal with the sequence of open and closed prefixes of Sturmian words and prove…
Borel and Reutenauer (2006) showed, \emph{inter alia}, that a word $w$ of length $n>1$ is conjugate to a Christoffel word if and only if for $k=0,1, \dots , n-1$, $w$ has $k+1$ distinct circular factors of length $k$. Sturmian words are the…
Let $(X_i)_{i \geq 1}$ and $(Y_i)_{i\geq1}$ be two independent sequences of independent identically distributed random variables taking their values in a common finite alphabet and having the same law. Let $LC_n$ be the length of the…