Related papers: Doubled patterns are $3$-avoidable

A word $u$ is a scattered factor of $w$ if $u$ can be obtained from $w$ by deleting some of its letters. That is, there exist the (potentially empty) words $u_1,u_2,..., u_n$, and $v_0,v_1,..,v_n$ such that $u = u_1u_2...u_n$ and $w =…

In this paper, we consider a variant of the classical algorithmic problem of checking whether a given word $v$ is a subsequence of another word $w$. More precisely, we consider the problem of deciding, given a number $p$ (defining a…

We consider three aspects of avoiding large squares in infinite binary words. First, we construct an infinite binary word avoiding both cubes xxx and squares yy with |y| >= 4; our construction is somewhat simpler than the original…

Patterns are words with terminals and variables. The language of a pattern is the set of words obtained by uniformly substituting all variables with words that contain only terminals. In their original definition, patterns only allow for…

Given a permutation w, we show that the number of repeated letters in a reduced decomposition of w is always less than or equal to the number of 321- and 3412-patterns appearing in w. Moreover, we prove bijectively that the two quantities…

In this paper, we study some new factorizations of period-doubling sequences over a $k$-letter alphabet, where $k\geq 2$. First, we define the combinatorial and arithmetic properties of these sequences. Then, we define the kernel words of…

The notion of a two-dimensional word arises naturally in the study of combinatorics on words, while the iterative construction of pedal triangles results in a rich dynamical system in the study of geometry. At first, these two classes of…

A string $w$ is called a minimal absent word (MAW) for another string $T$ if $w$ does not occur in $T$ but the proper substrings of $w$ occur in $T$. For example, let $\Sigma = \{\mathtt{a, b, c}\}$ be the alphabet. Then, the set of MAWs…

The recently confirmed Dejean's conjecture about the threshold between avoidable and unavoidable powers of words gave rise to interesting and challenging problems on the structure and growth of threshold words. Over any finite alphabet with…

Pattern avoidance for permutations has been extensively studied, and has been generalized to vincular patterns, where certain elements can be required to be adjacent. In addition, cyclic permutations, i.e., permutations written in a circle…

If $x$ is a non-empty string then the repetition $xx$ is called a tandem repeat. Similarly, a tandem in a two dimensional array $X$ is a configuration consisting of a same primitive block $W$ that touch each other with one side or corner.…

Vincular and covincular patterns are generalizations of classical patterns allowing restrictions on the indices and values of the occurrences in a permutation. In this paper we study the integer sequences arising as the enumerations of…

A word $\bar{w} = \bar{u}\bar{u}$ is a $long$ $square$ if $\bar{u}$ is of length at least 3; a word $\bar{w}$ is $long$-$square$-$free$ if $\bar{w}$ contains no sub-word that is a long square. We can use words to generate graph colorings; a…

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 notion of a word-representable graph has been studied in a series of papers in the literature. A graph $G=(V,E)$ is word-representable if there exists a word $w$ over the alphabet $V$ such that letters $x$ and $y$ alternate in $w$ if…

We prove that every concatenation of $10$ or more binary squares contains an overlap. The bound $10$ is best possible. In contrast, over a ternary alphabet, there are infinitely long overlap-free words that consist of a concatenation of…

We study equations in groups G with unique m-th roots for each positive integer m. A word equation in two letters is an expression of the form w(X,A) = B, where w is a finite word in the alphabet {X,A}. We think of A,B in G as fixed…

Tandem duplication is an evolutionary process whereby a segment of DNA is replicated and proximally inserted. The different configurations that can arise from this process give rise to some interesting combinatorial questions. Firstly, we…

We study various aspects of Dyck words appearing in binary sequences, where $0$ is treated as a left parenthesis and $1$ as a right parenthesis. We show that binary words that are $7/3$-power-free have bounded nesting level, but this no…

We prove that the subvariety of $SL(2)\times SL(2)$ given by the matrix equation $w(X,Y)=\alpha$, where $w$ is a word in two letters, is closely related to an explicit smooth conic bundle over the associated `trace surface' in the…