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We revisit the topic of power-free morphisms, focusing on the properties of the class of complementary morphisms. Such morphisms are defined over a $2$-letter alphabet, and map the letters 0 and 1 to complementary words. We prove that every…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-12-11 Jeffrey Shallit , Arseny M. Shur , Stefan Zorcic

Free words are elements of a free monoid, generated over an alphabet via the binary operation of concatenation. Casually speaking, a free word is a finite string of letters. Henceforth, we simply refer to them as words. Motivated by recent…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2015-09-16 Danny Rorabaugh

We say that a finite factor $f$ of a word $w$ is \emph{imaged} if there exists a non-erasing morphism $m$, distinct from the identity, such that $w$ contains $m(f)$. We show that every infinite word contains an imaged factor of length at…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-10-01 Pascal Ochem , Matthieu Rosenfeld

A morphism h is unambiguous with respect to a word w if there is no other morphism g that maps w to the same image as h. In the present paper we study the question of whether, for any given word, there exists an unambiguous 1-uniform…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2011-08-19 Hossein Nevisi , Daniel Reidenbach

A language L is prefix-free if, whenever words u and v are in L and u is a prefix of v, then u=v. Suffix-, factor-, and subword-free languages are defined similarly, where "subword" means "subsequence". A language is bifix-free if it is…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2011-05-13 Janusz Brzozowski , Galina Jirásková , Baiyu Li , Joshua Smith

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 binary word is a map W : N --> {0,1}, and the set of factors of W with length n is F_n(W):={(W(i),W(i+1),...,W(i+n-1)) : i >= 0}. A word is Sturmian if |F_n(W)|=n+1 for every n>0. We show that the sum of the heights (also known as hamming…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Kevin O'Bryant

We consider partial words with a unique position starting a power. We show that over a $k$ letter alphabet, a partial word with a unique position starting a square can contain at most $k$ squares. This is in contrast to full words which can…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-02-05 John Machacek

We show that the equality language of two non-periodic binary morphisms is generated by at most two words. If its rank is two, then the generators start (and end) with different letters. This in particular implies that any binary language…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2012-09-19 Štěpán Holub

We show that the number of length-n words over a k-letter alphabet having no even palindromic prefix is the same as the number of length-n unbordered words, by constructing an explicit bijection between the two sets. A slightly different…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2020-06-05 Daniel Gabric , Jeffrey Shallit

Ulam words are binary words defined recursively as follows: the length-$1$ Ulam words are $0$ and $1$, and a binary word of length $n$ is Ulam if and only if it is expressible uniquely as a concatenation of two shorter, distinct Ulam words.…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2024-11-01 Andrei Mandelshtam

We introduce the notion of unavoidable (complete) sets of word patterns, which is a refinement for that of words, and study certain numerical characteristics for unavoidable sets of patterns. In some cases we employ the graph of pattern…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Alexander Burstein , Sergey Kitaev

Let $A$ and $B$ be sets of words of length $n$ over some finite alphabet. Suppose that no suffix of a word in $A$ coincides with a prefix of a word in $B$. Then we show that the product of densities of $A$ and $B$ is upper bounded by…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-03-04 Dmitrii Zakharov

Let $s_n$ be the number of words consisting of the ternary alphabet consisting of the digits 0, 1, and 2 such that no subword (or factor) is a square (a word concatenated with itself, e.g., $11$, $1212$, or $102102$). From computational…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2016-06-07 Michael Sollami , Craig C. Douglas , Manfred Liebmann

A factor $u$ of a word $w$ is a cover of $w$ if every position in $w$ lies within some occurrence of $u$ in $w$. A word $w$ covered by $u$ thus generalizes the idea of a repetition, that is, a word composed of exact concatenations of $u$.…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2014-01-03 Tomasz Kociumaka , Jakub Radoszewski , Wojciech Rytter , Solon P. Pissis , Tomasz Waleń

M.-P. Sch\"utzenberger asked to determine the support of the free Lie algebra ${\mathcal L}_{{\mathbb Z}_{m}}(A)$ on a finite alphabet $A$ over the ring ${\mathbb Z}_{m}$ of integers $\bmod m$ and all the corresponding pairs of twin and…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2008-07-23 Ioannis Michos

Every natural number greater than $2$ can be written as the sum of a prime and a square-free number, and recent work has imposed additional divisibility conditions on the square-free number. We overcome limitations in these works to prove…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2026-03-31 Ethan S. Lee , Rowan O'Clarey

Cross-bifix-free sets are sets of words such that no prefix of any word is a suffix of any other word. In this paper, we introduce a general constructive method for the sets of cross-bifix-free binary words of fixed length. It enables us to…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2011-12-15 Stefano Bilotta , Elisa Pergola , Renzo Pinzani

Two matrices are said non-overlapping if one of them can not be put on the other one in a way such that the corresponding entries coincide. We provide a set of non-overlapping binary matrices and a formula to enumerate it which involves the…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2016-01-29 Elena Barcucci , Antonio Bernini , Stefano Bilotta , Renzo Pinzani

Let $A_q$ be a $q$-letter alphabet and $w$ be a right infinite word on this alphabet. A subword of $w$ is a block of consecutive letters of $w$. The subword complexity function of $w$ assigns to each positive integer $n$ the number $f_w(n)$…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Irina Gheorghiciuc