Related papers: Avoidability of formulas with two variables
We consider words over a binary alphabet. A word $w$ is overlap-free if it does not have factors (blocks of consecutive letters) of the form $uvuvu$ for nonempty $u$. Let $M(w)$ denote the number of positions that are middle positions of…
We consider avoiding mesosomes -- that is, words of the form $xx'$ with $x'$ a conjugate of $x$ that is different from $x$ -- over a binary alphabet. We give a structure theorem for mesosome-avoiding words, count how many there are,…
Word $W$ is said to encounter word $V$ provided there is a homomorphism $\phi$ mapping letters to nonempty words so that $\phi(V)$ is a substring of $W$. For example, taking $\phi$ such that $\phi(h)=c$ and $\phi(u)=ien$, we see that…
Recently, Grytczuk, Kordulewski, and Niewiadomski defined an extremal word over an alphabet $\mathbb{A}$ to be a word with the property that inserting any letter from $\mathbb{A}$ at any position in the word yields a given pattern. In this…
A pattern $\alpha$ is a string of variables and terminal letters. We say that $\alpha$ matches a word $w$, consisting only of terminal letters, if $w$ can be obtained by replacing the variables of $\alpha$ by terminal words. The matching…
We study the avoidability of long $k$-abelian-squares and $k$-abelian-cubes on binary and ternary alphabets. For $k=1$, these are M\"akel\"a's questions. We show that one cannot avoid abelian-cubes of abelian period at least $2$ in infinite…
A Cayley permutation is a word of positive integers such that if a letter appears in this word, then all positive integers smaller than that letter also appear. We initiate a systematic study of pattern avoidance on Cayley permutations…
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…
In this paper, we study the pattern occurrence in $k$-ary words. We prove an explicit upper bound on the number of $k$-ary words avoiding any given pattern using a random walk argument. Additionally, we reproduce several already known…
A permutation $\pi$ contains a pattern $\sigma$ if and only if there is a subsequence in $\pi$ with its letters are in the same relative order as those in $\sigma$. Partially ordered patterns (POPs) provide a convenient way to denote…
Let A be an alphabet and W be a set of words in the free monoid A*. Let S(W) denote the Rees quotient over the ideal of A* consisting of all words that are not subwords of words in W. We call a set of words W finitely based if the monoid…
The method we have applied in "A. Bernini, L. Ferrari, R. Pinzani, Enumerating permutations avoiding three Babson-Steingrimsson patterns, Ann. Comb. 9 (2005), 137--162" to count pattern avoiding permutations is adapted to words. As an…
We study a new notion of cyclic avoidance of abelian powers. A finite word $w$ avoids abelian $N$-powers cyclically if for each abelian $N$-power of period $m$ occurring in the infinite word $w^\omega$, we have $m \geq |w|$. Let…
A word $w=w_1w_2\cdots w_n$ is alternating if either $w_1<w_2>w_3<w_4>\cdots$ (when the word is up-down) or $w_1>w_2<w_3>w_4<\cdots$ (when the word is down-up). The study of alternating words avoiding classical permutation patterns was…
A pattern p (i.e., a string of variables and terminals) matches a word w, if w can be obtained by uniformly replacing the variables of p by terminal words. The respective matching problem, i.e., deciding whether or not a given pattern…
An interesting phenomenon in combinatorics on words is when every recurrent word satisfying some avoidance constraints has the same factor set as a morphic word. An early example is the Hall-Thue word, fixed point of the morphism…
We investigate the least number of palindromic factors in an infinite word. We first consider general alphabets, and give answers to this problem for periodic and non-periodic words, closed or not under reversal of factors. We then…
Clark has defined the notion of $n$-avoidance basis which contains the avoidable formulas with at most $n$ variables that are closest to be unavoidable in some sense. The family $C_i$ of circular formulas is such that $C_1=AA$,…
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 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…