Related papers: Half-flips are 5-avoidable

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…

A non-empty word $w$ is a border of the word $u$ if $\vert w\vert<\vert u\vert$ and $w$ is both a prefix and a suffix of $u$. A word $u$ with the border $w$ is closed if $u$ has exactly two occurrences of $w$. A word $u$ is privileged if…

To any infinite word w over a finite alphabet A we can associate two infinite words min(w) and max(w) such that any prefix of min(w) (resp. max(w)) is the lexicographically smallest (resp. greatest) amongst the factors of w of the same…

Letters $x$ and $y$ alternate in a word $w$ if after deleting in $w$ all letters but the copies of $x$ and $y$ we either obtain a word $xyxy\cdots$ (of even or odd length) or a word $yxyx\cdots$ (of even or odd length). A graph $G=(V,E)$ is…

A factor $u$ of a word $w$ is a cover of $w$ if every position in $w$ lies within some occurrence of $u$ in $w$. A word $w$ covered by $u$ thus generalizes the idea of a repetition, that is, a word composed of exact concatenations of $u$.…

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…

This paper concerns the avoidability of abelian and additive powers in infinite rich words. In particular, we construct an infinite additive $5$-power-free rich word over $\{0,1\}$ and an infinite additive $4$-power-free rich word over…

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…

We introduce new avoidability problems for words by considering equivalence relations, k-abelian equivalences, which lie properly in between equality and commutative equality, i.e. abelian equality. For two k-abelian equivalent words the…

We investigate the avoidability of unary patterns of size of four with morphic permutations. More precisely, we show that, for the positive integers $i,j,k$, the sizes of the alphabets over which a pattern $x \pi ^ {i} (x) \pi^{j}(x)…

A word is said to be bordered if it contains a nonempty proper prefix that is also a suffix. A pair of words $(u, v)$ is said to be mutually bordered if there exists a word that is a nonempty proper prefix of $u$ and suffix of $v$, and…

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…

Entringer, Jackson, and Schatz conjectured in 1974 that every infinite cubefree binary word contains arbitrarily long squares. In this paper we show this conjecture is false: there exist infinite cubefree binary words avoiding all squares…

A graph $G=(V,E)$ is a \emph{word-representable graph} if there exists a word $W$ over the alphabet $V$ such that letters $x$ and $y$ alternate in $W$ if and only if $(x,y)\in E$ for each $x\neq y$. In this paper we give an effective…

We characterize the formulas that are avoided by every $\alpha$-free word for some $\alpha>1$. We study the avoidability index of formulas whose fragments are of the form $XYX$. The largest avoidability index of an avoidable palindrome…

Word-representable graphs are a class of graphs that can be represented by words, where edges and non-edges are determined by the alternation of letters in those words. Several papers in the literature have explored the…

A word $w$ is called rich if it contains $| w|+1$ palindromic factors, including the empty word. We say that a rich word $w$ can be extended in at least two ways if there are two distinct letters $x,y$ such that $wx,wy$ are rich. Let $R$…

Fici and Saarela ([2]) conjectured that a binary word of length n contains at least $\lfloor n/4 \rfloor$ abelian squares. We slightly extend this conjecture and show that it holds in some special cases. In all other cases we have the…

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 $\beta$,…

Richomme asked the following question: what is the infimum of the real numbers $\alpha$ > 2 such that there exists an infinite word that avoids $\alpha$-powers but contains arbitrarily large squares beginning at every position? We resolve…