Related papers: The most unbalanced words $0^{q-p}1^p$ and majoriz…
In the past few decades there has been a good deal of papers which are concerned with optimization problems in different areas of mathematics (along 0-1 words, finite or infinite) and which yield - sometimes quite unexpectedly - balanced…
A word $u$ defined over an alphabet $\mathcal{A}$ is $c$-balanced ($c\in\mathbb{N}$) if for all pairs of factors $v$, $w$ of $u$ of the same length and for all letters $a\in\mathcal{A}$, the difference between the number of letters $a$ in…
A finite word $w$ of length $n$ contains at most $n+1$ distinct palindromic factors. If the bound $n+1$ is attained, the word $w$ is called rich. An infinite word $w$ is called rich if every finite factor of $w$ is rich. Let $w$ be a word…
A finite word $w$ is called \emph{rich} if it contains $\vert w\vert+1$ distinct palindromic factors including the empty word. For every finite rich word $w$ there are distinct nonempty palindromes $w_1, w_2,\dots,w_p$ such that…
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…
For $d\ge 1$, a word $w\in \{ 0,1\}^{\Z^d}$ is called balanced if there exists $M > 0$ such that for any two rectangles $R, R^{'}\subset\Z^d$ that are translates of each other, the number of occurrences of the symbol $1$ in $R$ and $R^{'}$…
In a recent paper of Rampersad et al., the authors conjectured that the smallest possible critical exponent of an infinite balanced word over a 5-letter alphabet is $3/2$. We prove this result, using a formulation of first-order logic, the…
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…
In the study of infinite words, various notions of balancedness provide quantitative measures for how regularly letters or factors occur, and they find applications in several areas of mathematics and theoretical computer science. In this…
Let S be a finite set of words over an alphabet Sigma. The set S is said to be complete if every word w over the alphabet Sigma is a factor of some element of S*, i.e. w belongs to Fact(S*). Otherwise if S is not complete, we are interested…
We study balancedness properties of words given by the Arnoux-Rauzy and Brun multi-dimensional continued fraction algorithms. We show that almost all Brun words on 3 letters and Arnoux-Rauzy words over arbitrary alphabets are finitely…
Let $\mathfrak A$ be an alphabet and $W$ be a set of words in the free monoid ${\mathfrak A}^*$. Let $S(W)$ denote the Rees quotient over the ideal of ${\mathfrak A}^*$ consisting of all words that are not subwords of words in $W$. A set of…
Over an alphabet of size 3 we construct an infinite balanced word with critical exponent 2+sqrt(2)/2. Over an alphabet of size 4 we construct an infinite balanced word with critical exponent (5+sqrt(5))/4. Over larger alphabets, we give…
A \emph{border} of a word $w$ is a word that is both a non-empty proper prefix and suffix of $w$. If $w$ has a border, then it is said to be \emph{bordered}; otherwise, it is said to be \emph{unbordered}. The main results of this paper are…
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 AutF_n}. In this…
Let $P$ be a partially ordered set and consider the free monoid $P^*$ of all words over $P$. If $w,w'\in P^*$ then $w'$ is a factor of $w$ if there are words $u,v$ with $w=uw'v$. Define generalized factor order on $P^*$ by letting $u\le w$…
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…
If w is a word in d>1 letters and G is a finite group, evaluation of w on a uniformly randomly chosen d-tuple in G gives a random variable with values in G, which may or may not be uniform. It is known that if G ranges over finite simple…
A set of words, also called a language, is letter-balanced if the number of occurrences of each letter only depends on the length of the word, up to a constant. Similarly, a language is factor-balanced if the difference of the number of…
We exhibit combinatorial results on Christoffel words and binary balanced words that are motivated by their geometric interpretation as approximations of digital segments. We give a closed formula for counting the exact number of balanced…