Related papers: Critical exponents of infinite balanced words
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…
We study infinite ternary words that contain few distinct palindromes. In particular, we classify such words according to their critical exponent.
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…
For each $\alpha > 2$ there is a binary word with critical exponent $\alpha$.
Rich words are characterized by containing the maximum possible number of distinct palindromes. Several characteristic properties of rich words have been studied; yet the analysis of repetitions in rich words still involves some interesting…
We find the lexicographically least infinite binary rich word having critical exponent $2+\sqrt{2}/2$
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 $2+\sqrt{2}/2$…
We study infinite binary words that contain few distinct palindromes. In particular, we classify such words according to their critical exponents. This extends results by Fici and Zamboni [TCS 2013]. Interestingly, the words with 18 and 20…
We study the threshold between avoidable and unavoidable repetitions in infinite balanced sequences over finite alphabets. The conjecture stated by Rampersad, Shallit and Vandomme says that the minimal critical exponent of balanced…
We study aperiodic balanced sequences over finite alphabets. A sequence vv of this type is fully characterised by a Sturmian sequence u and two constant gap sequences y and y'. We show that the language of v is eventually dendric and we…
A square is the concatenation of a nonempty word with itself. A word has period p if its letters at distance p match. The exponent of a nonempty word is the quotient of its length over its smallest period. In this article we give a proof of…
A position $p$ in a word $w$ is critical if the minimal local period at $p$ is equal to the global period of $w$. According to the Critical Factorisation Theorem all words of length at least two have a critical point. We study the number…
The critical exponent of an infinite word is defined to be the supremum of the exponent of each of its factors. For k-automatic sequences, we show that this critical exponent is always either a rational number or infinite, and its value is…
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…
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…
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…
We construct infinite cubefree binary words containing exponentially many distinct squares of length n. We also show that for every positive integer n, there is a cubefree binary square of length 2n.
For certain generalized Thue-Morse words t, we compute the "critical exponent", i.e., the supremum of the set of rational numbers that are exponents of powers in t, and determine exactly the occurrences of powers realizing it.
The abelian critical exponent of an infinite word $w$ is defined as the maximum ratio between the exponent and the period of an abelian power occurring in $w$. It was shown by Fici et al. that the set of finite abelian critical exponents of…
We revisit the question of classification of balanced circular words and focus on the case of a ternary alphabet. We propose a $3$-dimensional generalisation of the discrete approximation representation of Christoffel words. By considering…