Related papers: Words Avoiding Tangrams
We prove that every concatenation of $10$ or more binary squares contains an overlap. The bound $10$ is best possible. In contrast, over a ternary alphabet, there are infinitely long overlap-free words that consist of a concatenation of…
We say that a word $w$ on a totally ordered alphabet avoids the word $v$ if there are no subsequences in $w$ order-equivalent to $v$. In this paper we suggest a new approach to the enumeration of words on at most $k$ letters avoiding a…
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 $f= (p)$ where $h: \Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing morphism. A pattern…
A \emph{binary tanglegram} is a drawing of a pair of rooted binary trees whose leaf sets are in one-to-one correspondence; matching leaves are connected by inter-tree edges. For applications, for example, in phylogenetics, it is essential…
Two finite words $u,v$ are 2-binomially equivalent if, for all words $x$ of length at most 2, the number of occurrences of $x$ as a (scattered) subword of $u$ is equal to the number of occurrences of $x$ in $v$. This notion is a refinement…
We study a new notion of cyclic avoidance of abelian powers. A finite word $w$ avoids abelian $N$-powers cyclically if for each abelian $N$-power of period $m$ occurring in the infinite word $w^\omega$, we have $m \geq |w|$. Let…
A \emph{square} is a word of the form $uu$, where $u$ is a nonempty finite word. Given a finite word $w$ of length $n$, let $[w]$ denote the corresponding \emph{circular word}, i.e., the set of all cyclic rotations of $w$. We study the…
A tanglegram $\cal T$ consists of two rooted binary trees with the same number of leaves, and a perfect matching between the two leaf sets. In a layout, the tanglegrams is drawn with the leaves on two parallel lines, the trees on either…
A pattern is encountered in a word if some infix of the word is the image of the pattern under some non-erasing morphism. A pattern $p$ is unavoidable if, over every finite alphabet, every sufficiently long word encounters $p$. A theorem by…
We study the avoidability of long $k$-abelian-squares and $k$-abelian-cubes on binary and ternary alphabets. For $k=1$, these are M\"akel\"a's questions. We show that one cannot avoid abelian-cubes of abelian period at least $2$ in infinite…
The repetition threshold is the smallest real number $\alpha$ such that there exists an infinite word over a $k$-letter alphabet that avoids repetition of exponent strictly greater than $\alpha$. This notion can be generalized to graph…
We begin a systematic study of the relations between subword complexity of infinite words and their power avoidance. Among other things, we show that -- the Thue-Morse word has the minimum possible subword complexity over all overlap-free…
The Thue number $\pi(G)$ of a graph $G$ is the minimum number of colors needed to color $G$ without creating a square on a path of $G$. For a graph class $C$, $\pi(C)$ is the supremum of $\pi(G)$ over the graphs $G\in C$. The Thue number…
A tanglegram of size n is a graph formed from two rooted binary trees with n leaves each and a perfect matching between their leaf sets. Tanglegrams are used to model co-evolution in various settings. A tanglegram layout is a straight line…
Twins in a finite word are formed by a pair of identical subwords placed at disjoint sets of positions. We investigate the maximum length of twins in a random word over a $k$-letter alphabet. The obtained lower bounds for small values of…
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,…
In combinatorics on words, a word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is said to avoid a pattern $p$ over an alphabet $\Delta$ of variables if there is no factor $f$ of $w$ such that $f=h(p)$ where $h:\Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing…
An infinte word w avoids a pattern p with the involution t if there is no substitution for the variables in p and no involution t such that the resulting word is a factor of w. We investigate the avoidance of patterns with respect to the…
The exponent of a word is the ratio of its length over its smallest period. The repetitive threshold r(a) of an a-letter alphabet is the smallest rational number for which there exists an infinite word whose finite factors have exponent at…
We find finite-state recurrences to enumerate the words on the alphabet $[n]^r$ which avoid the patterns 123 and $1k(k-1)\dots2$, and, separately, the words which avoid the patterns 1234 and $1k(k-1)\dots2$.