Related papers: An explicit condition for boundedly supermultiplic…

We study the asymptotics and fine-scale behavior of quantitative combinatorial measures of infinite words and related dynamical and algebraic structures. We construct infinite recurrent words $w$ whose complexity functions $p_w(n)$ are…

The recently confirmed Dejean's conjecture about the threshold between avoidable and unavoidable powers of words gave rise to interesting and challenging problems on the structure and growth of threshold words. Over any finite alphabet with…

A good range of problems on trees can be described by the following general setting: Given a bilinear map $*:\mathbb R^d\times\mathbb R^d\to\mathbb R^d$ and a vector $s\in\mathbb R^d$, we need to estimate the largest possible absolute value…

We revisit the so-called "Three Squares Lemma" by Crochemore and Rytter [Algorithmica 1995] and, using arguments based on Lyndon words, derive a more general variant which considers three overlapping squares which do not necessarily share a…

We investigate quantitative aspects of the LEF property for subgroups of the topological full group $[[ \sigma ]]$ of a two-sided minimal subshift over a finite alphabet, measured via the LEF growth function. We show that the LEF growth of…

A prefix normal word is a binary word with the property that no substring has more 1s than the prefix of the same length. This class of words is important in the context of binary jumbled pattern matching. In this paper we present an…

In 2007, Grytczuk conjecture that for any sequence $(\ell_i)_{i\ge1}$ of alphabets of size $3$ there exists a square-free infinite word $w$ such that for all $i$, the $i$-th letter of $w$ belongs to $\ell_i$. The result of Thue of 1906…

Using a new approach based on automatic sequences, logic, and a decision procedure, we reprove some old theorems about circularly squarefree words and unbordered conjugates in a new and simpler way. Furthermore, we prove three new results…

In this paper, we extend the notion of Lyndon word to transfinite words. We prove two main results. We first show that, given a transfinite word, there exists a unique factorization in Lyndon words that are densely non-increasing, a…

We prove the logarithmic Sarnak conjecture for sequences of subquadratic word growth. In particular, we show that the Liouville function has at least quadratically many sign patterns. We deduce the main theorem from a variant which bounds…

An overlap-free (or $\beta$-free) word $w$ over a fixed alphabet $\Sigma$ is extremal if every word obtained from $w$ by inserting a single letter from $\Sigma$ at any position contains an overlap (or a factor of exponent at least $\beta$,…

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…

The success of large language models (LLMs) has motivated formal theories of language generation and learning. We study the framework of \emph{language generation in the limit}, where an adversary enumerates strings from an unknown language…

In this work we consider several aspects of the thermodynamic formalism in a randomized setting. Let $X$ be a non-trivial mixing shift of finite type, and let $f : X \to \mathbb{R}$ be a H\"older continuous potential with associated Gibbs…

Minimal forbidden factors are a useful tool for investigating properties of words and languages. Two factorial languages are distinct if and only if they have different (antifactorial) sets of minimal forbidden factors. There exist…

We show that for any $i > 0$, it is decidable, given a regular language, whether it is expressible in the $\Sigma_i[<]$ fragment of first-order logic FO[<]. This settles a question open since 1971. Our main technical result relies on the…

This paper studies the complexity of operations on finite automata and the complexity of their decision problems when the alphabet is unary. Let $n$ denote the maximum of the number of states of the input finite automata considered in the…

We prove that for every $n \in \mathbb{N}$ and $\delta>0$ there exists a word $w_n \in F_2$ of length $n^{2/3} \log(n)^{3+\delta}$ which is a law for every finite group of order at most $n$. This improves upon the main result of [A. Thom,…

In this paper, we study arbitrary regular factorial languages over a finite alphabet $\Sigma$. For the set of words $L(n)$ of the length $n$ belonging to a regular factorial language $L$, we investigate the depth of decision trees solving…

We consider a general class of decision problems concerning formal languages, called ``(one-dimensional) unboundedness predicates'', for automata that feature reversal-bounded counters (RBCA). We show that each problem in this class reduces…