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Given a set of $t$ words of length $n$ over a $k$-letter alphabet, it is proved that there exists a common subsequence among two of them of length at least $\frac{n}{k}+cn^{1-1/(t-k-2)}$, for some $c>0$ depending on $k$ and $t$. This is…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2014-10-23 Boris Bukh , Jie Ma

We prove a precise formula for the minimal number K(n) such that every binary word of length $n$ can be divided into K(n) palindromes. Also we estimate the average number $\ol K(n)$ of palindromes composing a random binary word of the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2011-05-20 Alex Ravsky

We study some properties of the growth rate of $\mathcal{L}(\mathcal{A},\mathcal{F})$, that is, the language of words over the alphabet $\mathcal{A}$ avoiding the set of forbidden factors $\mathcal{F}$. We first provide a sufficient…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-04-09 Vuong Bui , Matthieu Rosenfeld

Let w be a group word. It is conjectured that if w has only countably many values in a profinite group G, then the verbal subgroup w(G) is finite. In the present paper we confirm the conjecture in the cases where w is a multilinear…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2016-10-20 Eloisa Detomi , Marta Morigi , Pavel Shumyatsky

The critical exponent of an infinite word $\bf x$ is the supremum, over all finite nonempty factors $f$, of the exponent of $f$. In this note we show that for all integers $k\geq 2,$ there is a binary infinite $k$-automatic sequence with…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-02-25 J. -P. Allouche , N. Rampersad , J. Shallit

Fici and Saarela ([2]) conjectured that a binary word of length n contains at least $\lfloor n/4 \rfloor$ abelian squares. We slightly extend this conjecture and show that it holds in some special cases. In all other cases we have the…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-04-28 Szilard Zsolt Fazekas , Adam Mammoliti , Robert Mercas , Jamie Simpson

A circular word, or a necklace, is an equivalence class under conjugation of a word. A fundamental question concerning regularities in standard words is bounding the number of distinct squares in a word of length $n$. The famous conjecture…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2017-08-03 Mika Amit , Paweł Gawrychowski

An overlap-free (or $\beta$-free) word $w$ over a fixed alphabet $\Sigma$ is extremal if every word obtained from $w$ by inserting a single letter from $\Sigma$ at any position contains an overlap (or a factor of exponent at least $\beta$,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2020-06-19 Lucas Mol , Narad Rampersad , Jeffrey Shallit

In combinatorics on words, a word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is said to avoid a pattern $p$ over an alphabet $\Delta$ of variables if there is no factor $f$ of $w$ such that $f=h(p)$ where $h:\Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2016-10-14 Pascal Ochem , Matthieu Rosenfeld

A problem of reconstructing words from their subwords involves determining the minimum amount of information needed, such as multisets of scattered subwords of a specific length or the frequency of scattered subwords from a given set, in…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Sergey Luchinin , Svetlana Puzynina , Michaël Rao

A prefix normal word is a binary word whose prefixes contain at least as many 1s as any of its factors of the same length. Introduced by Fici and Lipt\'ak in 2011 the notion of prefix normality is so far only defined for words over the…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2021-04-20 Yannik Eikmeier , Pamela Fleischmann , Mitja Kulczynski , Dirk Nowotka

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…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-01-17 Narad Rampersad , Jeffrey Shallit , Élise Vandomme

We prove that the property of being closed (resp., palindromic, rich, privileged trapezoidal, balanced) is expressible in first-order logic for automatic (and some related) sequences. It therefore follows that the characteristic function of…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2015-12-01 Luke Schaeffer , Jeffrey Shallit

In this paper we consider the following problems: how many different subsets of Sigma^n can occur as set of all length-n factors of a finite word? If a subset is representable, how long a word do we need to represent it? How many such…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2013-04-15 Shuo Tan , Jeffrey Shallit

Given a word $w$, what is the maximum possible number of appearances of $w$ reading contiguously along any of the directions in $\{-1, 0, 1\}^d \setminus \{\mathbf{0}\}$ in a large $d$-dimensional grid (as in a word search)? Patchell and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-01 Zachary Halberstam , Carl Schildkraut

An $n$-length binary word is $q$-decreasing, $q\geq 1$, if every of its length maximal factor of the form $0^a1^b$ satisfies $a=0$ or $q\cdot a > b$.We show constructively that these words are in bijection with binary words having no…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2021-12-08 Jean-Luc Baril , Sergey Kirgizov , Vincent Vajnovszki

We prove lower bounds on the length of regular expressions for finite languages by methods from arithmetic circuit complexity. First, we show a reduction: the length of a regular expression for a language $L\subseteq \{0,1\}^n$ is bounded…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2021-01-01 Ehud Cseresnyes , Hannes Seiwert

The (bitwise) complement $\overline{x}$ of a binary word $x$ is obtained by changing each $0$ in $x$ to $1$ and vice versa. An $\textit{antisquare}$ is a nonempty word of the form $x\, \overline{x}$. In this paper, we study infinite binary…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-02-14 Aseem Baranwal , James Currie , Lucas Mol , Pascal Ochem , Narad Rampersad , Jeffrey Shallit

A finite word $w$ is an abelian square if $w = xx^\prime$ with $x^\prime$ a permutation of $x$. In 1972, Entringer, Jackson, and Schatz proved that every binary word of length $k^2 + 6k$ contains an abelian square of length $\geq 2k$. We…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2010-12-03 Elyot Grant

Trapezoidal words are finite words having at most n+1 distinct factors of length n, for every n>=0. They encompass finite Sturmian words. We distinguish trapezoidal words into two disjoint subsets: open and closed trapezoidal words. A…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2011-08-19 Gabriele Fici