Related papers: Reconstructing words using queries on subwords or …
Frobenius observed that the number of times an element of a finite group is obtained as a commutator is given by a specific combination of the irreducible characters of the group. More generally, for any word w the number of times an…
Indexed languages are a classical notion in formal language theory, which has attracted attention in recent decades due to its role in higher-order model checking: They are precisely the languages accepted by order-2 pushdown automata. The…
Let us consider an infinite word and $k\geq 1$ an integer. By steps of $k$, we substitute a letter ofthis infinite word by the power of an external letter. The new word obtaining by this process is called $k$ to $k$ substitution of a power…
A {\em square} is a word of the form $uu$. In this paper we prove that for a given finite word $w$, the number of distinct square factors of $w$ is bounded by $|w|-|\Alphabet(w)|+1$, where $|w|$ denotes the length of $w$ and…
We give lower bounds on the growth rate of Dejean words, i.e. minimally repetitive words, over a k-letter alphabet, for k=5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Put together with the known upper bounds, we estimate these growth rates with the precision of…
A word~$w$ has a border $u$ if $u$ is a non-empty proper prefix and suffix of $u$. A word~$w$ is said to be \emph{closed} if $w$ is of length at most $1$ or if $w$ has a border that occurs exactly twice in $w$. A word~$w$ is said to be…
Motivated by an application in computational biology, we consider low-rank matrix factorization with $\{0,1\}$-constraints on one of the factors and optionally convex constraints on the second one. In addition to the non-convexity shared…
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…
We find generating functions for the number of words avoiding certain patterns or sets of patterns on at most 2 distinct letters and determine which of them are equally avoided. We also find the exact number of words avoiding certain…
In combinatorics on words, a word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is said to avoid a pattern $p$ over an alphabet $\Delta$ if there is no factor $f$ of $w$ such that $f=h(p)$ where $h:\Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing morphism. A pattern…
A square is a word of the form $xx$ for a non-empty word $x$. Brlek and Li [Comb. Theory, 2025] proved that the number of distinct squares in a word $w$ of length $n$ is at most $n - \sigma$, where $\sigma$ is the number of letters used in…
An absent word of a word y of length n is a word that does not occur in y. It is a minimal absent word if all its proper factors occur in y. Minimal absent words have been computed in genomes of organisms from all domains of life; their…
In this paper, we explore applications of combinatorics on words across various domains, including data compression, error detection, cryptographic protocols, and pseudorandom number generation. The examination of the theoretical…
We consider two kinds of problems: the computation of polynomial and rational solutions of linear recurrences with coefficients that are polynomials with integer coefficients; indefinite and definite summation of sequences that are…
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,…
This note is an attempt to attack a conjecture of Fraenkel and Simpson stated in 1998 concerning the number of distinct squares in a finite word. By counting the number of (right-)special factors, we give an upper bound of the number of…
We investigate questions related to the presence of primitive words and Lyndon words in automatic and linearly recurrent sequences. We show that the Lyndon factorization of a k-automatic sequence is itself k-automatic. We also show that the…
This note is an attempt to unconditionally prove the existence of weak one way functions (OWF). Starting from a provably intractable decision problem $L_D$ (whose existence is nonconstructively assured from the well-known discrete…
We present an improved wavelet tree construction algorithm and discuss its applications to a number of rank/select problems for integer keys and strings. Given a string of length n over an alphabet of size $\sigma\leq n$, our method builds…
In the study of infinite words, various notions of balancedness provide quantitative measures for how regularly letters or factors occur, and they find applications in several areas of mathematics and theoretical computer science. In this…