Related papers: Repetition Threshold for Binary Automatic Sequence…
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…
We introduce the notion of expandability in the context of automaton semigroups and groups: a word is k-expandable if one can append a suffix to it such that the size of the orbit under the action of the automaton increases by at least k.…
In this paper, we consider infinite words that arise as fixed points of primitive substitutions on a finite alphabet and finite colorings of their factors. Any such infinite word exhibits a "hierarchal structure" that will allow us to…
Solutions to the random Fibonacci recurrence x_{n+1}=x_{n} + or - Bx_{n-1} decrease (increase) exponentially, x_{n} = exp(lambda n), for sufficiently small (large) B. In the limits B --> 0 and B --> infinity, we expand the Lyapunov exponent…
We characterize complete deterministic finite automata with two input letters in which every non-empty set of states occurs as the image of the whole state set under the action of a suitable input word. The characterization leads to a…
Given an infinite word, enumerating its factors is an important exercise for understanding the structure of the word. The process of finding all the factors is quite tricky for two-dimensional words. In this paper, two possible ways of…
In the classic problem of sequence prediction, a predictor receives a sequence of values from an emitter and tries to guess the next value before it appears. The predictor masters the emitter if there is a point after which all of the…
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…
Let $k\ge 2$. We prove that the characteristic sequence of a regular language over a $k$-letter alphabet is $k$-automatic. More generally, if $t\ge 2$ and $t,k$ are multiplicatively dependent, we show that the characteristic sequence of a…
We introduce and study a new complexity function in combinatorics on words, which takes into account the smallest second occurrence time of a factor of an infinite word. We characterize the eventually periodic words and the Sturmian words…
We investigate the behavior of the periods and border lengths of random words over a fixed alphabet. We show that the asymptotic probability that a random word has a given maximal border length $k$ is a constant, depending only on $k$ and…
In this paper, we define a variant of Fibonacci-like sequences that we call prime Fibonacci sequences, where one takes the sum of the previous two terms and returns the smallest odd prime divisor of that sum as the next term. We prove that…
We present a new recursive generation algorithm for prefix normal words. These are binary strings with the property that no substring has more 1s than the prefix of the same length. The new algorithm uses two operations on binary strings,…
Fici, Restivo, Silva, and Zamboni define a $\textit{$k$-anti-power}$ to be a concatenation of $k$ consecutive words that are pairwise distinct and have the same length. They ask for the maximum $k$ such that every aperiodic recurrent word…
We introduced the notation of a set of prohibitions and give definitions of a complete set and a crucial word with respect to a given set of prohibitions. We consider 3 particular sets which appear in different areas of mathematics and for…
The number of frequencies of factors of length $n+1$ in a recurrent aperiodic infinite word does not exceed $3\Delta \C(n)$, where $\Delta \C (n)$ is the first difference of factor complexity, as shown by Boshernitzan. Pelantov\'a together…
We show that for any two distinct words $ s_1, s_2 $ over an arbitrary alphabets, there exists a deterministic finite automaton with $ O(\log^2 n) $ states that accepts $ s_1 $ and rejects $ s_2 $. This improves the previous upper bound of…
Using a novel rewriting problem, we show that several natural decision problems about finite automata are undecidable (i.e., recursively unsolvable). In contrast, we also prove three related problems are decidable. We apply one result to…
Maximum satisfiability is a canonical NP-hard optimization problem that appears empirically hard for random instances. Let us say that a Conjunctive normal form (CNF) formula consisting of $k$-clauses is $p$-satisfiable if there exists a…
We give estimates from below for the greatest prime factor of the n-th term of a binary recurrence sequence.