Related papers: 4-tangrams are 4-avoidable

The focus of this work is the study of Parikh matrices with emphasis on two concrete problems. In the first part of our presentation we show that a conjecture by Dick at al. in 2021 only stands in the case of ternary alphabets, while…

Let (t_n) be the classical Thue-Morse sequence defined by t_n = s_2(n) (mod 2), where s_2 is the sum of the bits in the binary representation of n. It is well known that for any integer k>=1 the frequency of the letter "1" in the…

A \emph{magic square} is an $n \times n$ array of distinct positive integers whose sum along any row, column, or main diagonal is the same number. We compute the number of such squares for $n=4$, as a function of either the magic sum or an…

These lecture notes provide an introduction to combinatorics on words and its interactions with dynamics, algebra, and arithmetic. The central theme is the notion of low factor complexity for infinite words. We investigate the following…

In [2], while studying a relevant class of polyominoes that tile the plane by translation, i.e., double square polyominoes, the authors found that their boundary words, encoded by the Freeman chain coding on a four letters alphabet, have…

If $x$ is a non-empty string then the repetition $xx$ is called a tandem repeat. Similarly, a tandem in a two dimensional array $X$ is a configuration consisting of a same primitive block $W$ that touch each other with one side or corner.…

A word is called $\beta$-free if it has no factors of exponent greater than or equal to $\beta$. The repetition threshold $\mathrm{RT}(k)$ is the infimum of the set of all $\beta$ such that there are arbitrarily long $k$-ary $\beta$-free…

A parallel minor is obtained from a graph by any sequence of edge contractions and parallel edge deletions. We prove that, for any positive integer k, every internally 4-connected graph of sufficiently high order contains a parallel minor…

This paper studies balance properties for billiard words. Billiard words generalize Sturmian words by coding trajectories in hypercubic billiards. In the setting of aperiodic order, they also provide the simplest examples of quasicrystals,…

Let $p$ be a prime. We define $S(p)$ the smallest number $k$ such that every positive integer is a sum of at most $k$ squares of integers that are not divisible by $p$. In this article, we prove that $S(2)=10$, $S(3)=6$, $S(5)=5$, and…

An expression for four-tangle is obtained by examining the negativity fonts present in a four-way partial transpose under local unitary operations. An alternate derivation of three tangle is also given.

A word is cubefree if it contains no non-empty subword of the form xxx. A morphism h : Sigma^* -> Sigma^* is k-uniform if h(a) has length k for all a in Sigma. A morphism is cubefree if it maps cubefree words to cubefree words. We show that…

We consider the problem of identifying tandem scattered subsequences within a string. Our algorithm identifies a longest subsequence which occurs twice without overlap in a string. This algorithm is based on the Hunt-Szymanski algorithm,…

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…

In 2016, Jang and Kim stated a conjecture about the norms of indecomposable integers in real quadratic number fields $\mathbb{Q} \left( \sqrt{D} \right)$ where $D>1$ is a squarefree integer. Their conjecture was later disproved by Kala for…

We generalise our earlier work on the number of squares in binary recurrence sequences, $\left\{ y_{k} \right\}_{k \geq -\infty}$. In the notation of our previous papers, here we consider the case when $N_{\alpha}$ is any negative integer…

An absent factor of a string $w$ is a string $u$ which does not occur as a contiguous substring (a.k.a. factor) inside $w$. We extend this well-studied notion and define absent subsequences: a string $u$ is an absent subsequence of a string…

We say a string has a cadence if a certain character is repeated at regular intervals, possibly with intervening occurrences of that character. We call the cadence anchored if the first interval must be the same length as the others. We…

We prove an inequality for the number of periods in a word x in terms of the length of x and its initial critical exponent. Next, we characterize all periods of the length-n prefix of a characteristic Sturmian word in terms of the lazy…

Brandenburg and (implicitly) Dejean introduced the concept of repetition threshold: the smallest real number alpha such that there exists an infinite word over a k-letter alphabet that avoids beta-powers for all beta>alpha. We generalize…