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Related papers: Subword complexity and power avoidance

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We characterize the squares occurring in infinite overlap-free binary words and construct various alpha power-free binary words containing infinitely many overlaps.

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 James Currie , Narad Rampersad , Jeffrey Shallit

Shallit and Wang studied deterministic automatic complexity of words. They showed that the automatic Hausdorff dimension $I(\mathbf t)$ of the infinite Thue word satisfies $1/3\le I(\mathbf t)\le 2/3$. We improve that result by showing that…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2020-02-03 Kayleigh Hyde , Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen

A word is square-free if it does not contain a nonempty word of the form $XX$ as a factor. A famous 1906 result of Thue asserts that there exist arbitrarily long square-free words over a $3$-letter alphabet. We study square-free words with…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-09-20 Michał Dębski , Jarosław Grytczuk , Bartłomiej Pawlik

The length $a(n)$ of the longest common subsequence of the $n$'th Thue-Morse word and its bitwise complement is studied. An open problem suggested by Jean Berstel in 2006 is to find a formula for $a(n)$. In this paper we prove new lower…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2019-12-03 Joakim Blikstad

Good words are binary words avoiding factors 11 and 1001, and patterns 0000 and 00010100. We show that good words bear the same relationship to the period-doubling sequence that overlap-free words bear to the Thue-Morse sequence. We prove…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-03-28 James D. Currie

We study words that barely avoid repetitions, for several senses of "barely". A squarefree (respectively, overlap-free, cubefree) word is irreducible if removing any one of its interior letters creates a square (respectively, overlap,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-08-25 Benjamin Przybocki

A word is square-free if it does not contain nonempty factors of the form $XX$. In 1906 Thue proved that there exist arbitrarily long square-free words over a $3$-letter alphabet. It was proved recently [7] that among these words there are…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-05-04 Jarosław Grytczuk , Hubert Kordulewski , Bartłomiej Pawlik

Motivated by a conjecture of Frid, Puzynina, and Zamboni, we investigate infinite words with the property that for infinitely many n, every length-n factor is a product of two palindromes. We show that every Sturmian word has this property,…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-09-18 Adam Borchert , Narad Rampersad

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…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2012-07-25 Golnaz Badkobeh , Maxime Crochemore

Factor complexity $\mathcal{C}$ and palindromic complexity $\mathcal{P}$ of infinite words with language closed under reversal are known to be related by the inequality $\mathcal{P}(n) + \mathcal{P}(n+1) \leq 2 +…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-03-12 Edita Pelantová , Štěpán Starosta

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…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2026-05-27 Lucas Mol , Narad Rampersad , Jeffrey Shallit

A narrow connection between infinite binary words rich in classical palindromes and infinite binary words rich simultaneously in palindromes and pseudopalindromes (the so-called $H$-rich words) is demonstrated. The correspondence between…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-06-22 Edita Pelantová , Štěpán Starosta

We enumerate all ternary length-l square-free words, which are words avoiding squares of words up to length l, for l<=24. We analyse the singular behaviour of the corresponding generating functions. This leads to new upper entropy bounds…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Christoph Richard , Uwe Grimm

We introduce and study a complexity function on words $c_x(n),$ called \emph{cyclic complexity}, which counts the number of conjugacy classes of factors of length $n$ of an infinite word $x.$ We extend the well-known Morse-Hedlund theorem…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2016-06-29 Julien Cassaigne , Gabriele Fici , Marinella Sciortino , Luca Q. Zamboni

A power is a word of the form $\underbrace{uu...u}_{k \; \text{times}}$, where $u$ is a word and $k$ is a positive integer and a square is a word of the form $uu$. Fraenkel and Simpson conjectured in 1998 that the number of distinct squares…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2022-09-16 Shuo Li

We construct an infinite binary word with critical exponent 3 that avoids abelian 4-powers. Our method gives an algorithm to determine if certain types of morphic sequences avoid additive powers. We also show that there are…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2021-11-16 James Currie , Lucas Mol , Narad Rampersad , Jeffrey Shallit

Recently Dekking conjectured the form of the subword complexity function for the Fibonacci-Thue-Morse sequence. In this note we prove his conjecture by purely computational means, using the free software Walnut.

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2020-11-10 Jeffrey Shallit

We consider the number of occurrences of subwords (non-consecutive sub-sequences) in a given word. We first define the notion of subword entropy of a given word that measures the maximal number of occurrences among all possible subwords. We…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-06 Wenjie Fang

The prefix palindromic length $PPL_u(n)$ of an infinite word $u$ is the minimal number of concatenated palindromes needed to express the prefix of length $n$ of $u$. In a 2013 paper with Puzynina and Zamboni we stated the conjecture that…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2020-01-09 Anna E. Frid

We define the Thue-Morse transform T on a class of infinite binary words. It sends the alternating word a_0 = 010101... to the Thue-Morse sequence. We then study its orbit a_m = T^m(a_0) as well as the sequences u_m and v_m giving…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2026-05-29 Benoit Cloitre