Related papers: Abelian Nivat's conjecture for non-rectangular pat…
In this paper we study an abelian version of the notion of return word. Our main result is a new characterization of Sturmian words via abelian returns. Namely, we prove that a word is Sturmian if and only if each of its factors has two or…
In this paper we prove that for any infinite word W whose set of factors is closed under reversal, the following conditions are equivalent: (I) all complete returns to palindromes are palindromes; (II) P(n) + P(n+1) = C(n+1) - C(n) + 2 for…
A celebrated theorem by Coven and Hedlund (1973) states that Sturmian words are characterized by their abelian complexity: they are precisely the infinite words with rationally independent letter frequencies and constant abelian complexity…
We study the following problem, first introduced by Dekking. Consider an infinite word x over an alphabet {0,1,...,k-1} and a semigroup homomorphism S:{0,1,...,k-1}* -> N. Let L_x denote the set of factors of x. What conditions on S and the…
The factor complexity ${\mathcal C}_{\mathbf u}$ of a sequence ${\mathbf u} = u_0u_1u_2 \cdots$ over a finite alphabet counts the number of factors of length $n$ occurring in $\mathbf u$, i.e., ${\mathcal C}_{\mathbf u}(n) = \#{\mathcal…
An abelian square is the concatenation of two words that are anagrams of one another. A word of length $n$ can contain $\Theta(n^2)$ distinct factors that are abelian squares. We study infinite words such that the number of abelian square…
We propose a technique for exploring the abelian complexity of recurrent infinite words, focusing particularly on infinite words associated with Parry numbers. Using that technique, we give the affirmative answer to the open question posed…
The factor complexity function $C_w(n)$ of a finite or infinite word $w$ counts the number of distinct factors of $w$ of length $n$ for each $n \ge 0$. A finite word $w$ of length $|w|$ is said to be trapezoidal if the graph of its factor…
A word $u$ defined over an alphabet $\mathcal{A}$ is $c$-balanced ($c\in\mathbb{N}$) if for all pairs of factors $v$, $w$ of $u$ of the same length and for all letters $a\in\mathcal{A}$, the difference between the number of letters $a$ in…
We study the $k$-Bonacci word over the infinite alphabet $\mathbb{N}$. Since the alphabet is infinite, the usual factor complexity is infinite and does not provide any information. We therefore investigate factor occurrence statistics in…
We survey known results and open problems in abelian combinatorics on words. Abelian combinatorics on words is the extension to the commutative setting of the classical theory of combinatorics on words. The extension is based on…
The notion of Abelian complexity of infinite words was recently used by the three last authors to investigate various Abelian properties of words. In particular, using van der Waerden's theorem, they proved that if a word avoids Abelian…
Two words $u$ and $v$ are $k$-abelian equivalent if, for each word $x$ of length at most $k$, $x$ occurs equally many times as a factor in both $u$ and $v$. The notion of $k$-abelian equivalence is an intermediate notion between the abelian…
In this paper, we introduce a variation of the factor complexity, called the $N$-factor complexity, which allows us to characterize the complexity of sequences on an infinite alphabet. We evaluate precisely the $N$-factor complexity for the…
We consider the class ${\cal P}_1$ of all infinite words $x\in A^\omega$ over a finite alphabet $A$ admitting a prefixal factorization, i.e., a factorization $x= U_0 U_1U_2 \cdots $ where each $U_i$ is a non-empty prefix of $x.$ With each…
Parikh-collinear morphisms have the property that all the Parikh vectors of the images of letters are collinear, i.e., the associated adjacency matrix has rank 1. In the conference DLT-WORDS 2023 we showed that fixed points of…
We study the relation between the palindromic and factor complexity of infinite words. We show that for uniformly recurrent words one has P(n)+P(n+1) \leq \Delta C(n) + 2, for all n \in N. For a large class of words it is a better estimate…
In this paper we undertake the general study of the Abelian complexity of an infinite word on a finite alphabet. We investigate both similarities and differences between the Abelian complexity and the usual subword complexity. While the…
We show that the 2-abelian complexity of the infinite Thue-Morse word is 2-regular, and other properties of the 2-abelian complexity, most notably that it is a concatenation of palindromes of increasing length. We also show sharp bounds for…
Let $f_W(n)$ be the number of different factors of length $n$ appearing in $W$. A classical result of Morse and Hedlund, stated in 1938, asserts that an infinite word $W$ is ultimately periodic if and only if $f_W(n)\leq n$ for some $n\in…