Related papers: Half-flips are 5-avoidable

A finite word $w$ is called \emph{rich} if it contains $\vert w\vert+1$ distinct palindromic factors including the empty word. For every finite rich word $w$ there are distinct nonempty palindromes $w_1, w_2,\dots,w_p$ such that…

Let u be a cyclic word in a free group F_n of finite rank n that has the minimum length over all cyclic words in its automorphic orbit, and let N(u) be the cardinality of the set {v: |v|=|u| and v=\phi(u) for some \phi \in AutF_n}. In this…

A finite word $w$ with $\vert w\vert=n$ contains at most $n+1$ distinct palindromic factors. If the bound $n+1$ is attained, the word $w$ is called \emph{rich}. Let $\Factor(w)$ be the set of factors of the word $w$. It is known that there…

The complement $\overline{x}$ of a binary word $x$ is obtained by changing each $0$ in $x$ to $1$ and vice versa. We study infinite binary words $\bf w$ that avoid sufficiently large complementary factors; that is, if $x$ is a factor of…

A word $u$ defined over an alphabet $\mathcal{A}$ is $c$-balanced ($c\in\mathbb{N}$) if for all pairs of factors $v$, $w$ of $u$ of the same length and for all letters $a\in\mathcal{A}$, the difference between the number of letters $a$ in…

A finite set S of words over the alphabet A is called non-complete if Fact(S*) is different from A*. A word w in A* - Fact(S*) is said to be uncompletable. We present a series of non-complete sets S_k whose minimal uncompletable words have…

Two finite words $u$ and $v$ are called abelian equivalent if each letter occurs equally many times in both $u$ and $v$. The abelian closure $\mathcal{A}(\mathbf{x})$ of an infinite word $\mathbf{x}$ is the set of infinite words…

A finite word $w$ of length $n$ contains at most $n+1$ distinct palindromic factors. If the bound $n+1$ is attained, the word $w$ is called rich. An infinite word $w$ is called rich if every finite factor of $w$ is rich. Let $w$ be a word…

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 consider several novel aspects of unique factorization in formal languages. We reprove the familiar fact that the set uf(L) of words having unique factorization into elements of L is regular if L is regular, and from this deduce an…

Rich words are characterized by containing the maximum possible number of distinct palindromes. Several characteristic properties of rich words have been studied; yet the analysis of repetitions in rich words still involves some interesting…

Vincular or dashed patterns resemble classical patterns except that some of the letters within an occurrence are required to be adjacent. We prove several infinite families of Wilf-equivalences for k-ary words involving vincular patterns…

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 \emph{matching preclusion number} of a graph is the minimum number of edges whose deletion results in a graph that has neither perfect matchings nor almost perfect matchings. As a generalization, Liu and Liu recently introduced the…

A graph $G = (V, E)$ is word-representable, if there exists a word w over the alphabet V such that for letters ${x, y} \in V$ , $x$ and $y$ alternate in $w$ if and only if $xy \in E$. In this paper, we prove that any non-empty…

A graph $G=(V,E)$ is word-representable if and only if there exists a word $w$ over the alphabet $V$ such that letters $x$ and $y$, $x\neq y$, alternate in $w$ if and only if $xy\in E$. A split graph is a graph in which the vertices can be…

We show that the following problems are decidable in a rank 2 free group F_2: does a given finitely generated subgroup H contain primitive elements? and does H meet the orbit of a given word u under the action of G, the group of…

Let $\mathfrak A$ be an alphabet and $W$ be a set of words in the free monoid ${\mathfrak A}^*$. Let $S(W)$ denote the Rees quotient over the ideal of ${\mathfrak A}^*$ consisting of all words that are not subwords of words in $W$. A set of…

A graph $G$ with four or more vertices is called bicritical if the removal of any pair of distinct vertices of $G$ results in a graph with a perfect matching. A bicritical graph is minimal if the deletion of each edge results in a…

We find generating functions for the number of words avoiding certain patterns or sets of patterns on at most 2 distinct letters and determine which of them are equally avoided. We also find the exact number of words avoiding certain…