Related papers: New optima for the deletion shadow
A central theorem in combinatorics is Sperner's Theorem, which determines the maximum size of a family $\mathcal{F}\subseteq \mathcal{P}(n)$ that does not contain a $2$-chain $F_1\subsetneq F_2$. Erd\H{o}s later extended this result and…
Let $\mathcal{S}_n$ be the symmetric group on the set $[n]:=\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$. A family $\mathcal{F}\subset \mathcal{S}_n$ is called intersecting if for every $\sigma,\pi\in \mathcal{F}$ there exists some $i\in [n]$ such that…
We consider the following novel variation on a classical avoidance problem from combinatorics on words: instead of avoiding repetitions in all factors of a word, we avoid repetitions in all factors where each individual factor is considered…
Denote by s_F(n) the minimal number of Fibonacci numbers needed to write n as a sum of Fibonacci numbers. We obtain the extremal minimal and maximal orders of magnitude of s_F(n^h)/s_F(n) for any h>= 2. We use this to show that for all…
We define a suffixient set for a text $T [1..n]$ to be a set $S$ of positions between 1 and $n$ such that, for any edge descending from a node $u$ to a node $v$ in the suffix tree of $T$, there is an element $s \in S$ such that $u$'s path…
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…
A collection of $k$ sets is said to form a $k$-sunflower, or $\Delta$-system, if the intersection of any two sets from the collection is the same, and we call a family of sets $\mathcal{F}$ sunflower-free if it contains no sunflowers.…
We give the first algorithm for adaptive alphabetic prefix-free coding that is worst-case optimal in terms of time and compression when $\sigma \in o \left( \frac{n^{1 / 2}}{\log n} \right)$, where $\sigma$ is the size of the alphabet and…
Identifying palindromes in sequences has been an interesting line of research in combinatorics on words and also in computational biology, after the discovery of the relation of palindromes in the DNA sequence with the HIV virus. Efficient…
A \emph{square} is a finite non-empty word consisting of two identical adjacent blocks. A word is \emph{square-free} if it does not contain a square as a factor. In any finite word one may delete the repeated block of a square, obtaining…
We extend the theory of minimal absent words to (rooted and unrooted) trees, having edges labeled by letters from an alphabet $\Sigma$ of cardinality $\sigma$. We show that the set $\text{MAW}(T)$ of minimal absent words of a rooted (resp.…
We consider the problem of minimizing the size of a family of sets G such that every subset of 1,...,n can be written as a disjoint union of at most k members of G, where k and n are given numbers. This problem originates in a real-world…
The problem of constructing optimal factoring automata arises in the context of unification factoring for the efficient execution of logic programs. Given an ordered set of $n$ strings of length $m$, the problem is to construct a trie-like…
Given a graph $G$ and an integer $k$, Max Min FVS asks whether there exists a minimal set of vertices of size at least $k$ whose deletion destroys all cycles. We present several results that improve upon the state of the art of the…
Two recent lower bounds on the compressibility of repetitive sequences, $\delta \le \gamma$, have received much attention. It has been shown that a length-$n$ string $S$ over an alphabet of size $\sigma$ can be represented within the…
A family $\mathcal{F}$ on ground set $[n]:=\{1,2,\ldots, n\}$ is maximal $k$-wise intersecting if every collection of at most $k$ sets in $\mathcal{F}$ has non-empty intersection, and no other set can be added to $\mathcal{F}$ while…
The dilation of a Euclidean graph is defined as the ratio of distance in the graph divided by distance in R^d. In this paper we consider the problem of positioning the root of a star such that the dilation of the resulting star is minimal.…
Minimal codes are linear codes where all non-zero codewords are minimal, i.e., whose support is not properly contained in the support of another codeword. The minimum possible length of such a $k$-dimensional linear code over $\mathbb{F}_q$…
A word $u$ is a subsequence of another word $w$ if $u$ can be obtained from $w$ by deleting some of its letters. The word $w$ with alph$(w)=\Sigma$ is called $k$-subsequence universal if the set of subsequences of length $k$ of $w$ contains…
Let At denote the set of infinite sequences of effective dimension t. We determine both how close and how far an infinite sequence of dimension s can be from one of dimension t, measured using the Besicovitch pseudometric. We also identify…