Related papers: Cubefree binary words avoiding long squares
We consider three aspects of avoiding large squares in infinite binary words. First, we construct an infinite binary word avoiding both cubes xxx and squares yy with |y| >= 4; our construction is somewhat simpler than the original…
We construct infinite cubefree binary words containing exponentially many distinct squares of length n. We also show that for every positive integer n, there is a cubefree binary square of length 2n.
In 1976, Dekking showed that there exists an infinite binary word that contains neither squares yy with y >= 4 nor cubes xxx. We show that `cube' can be replaced by any fractional power > 5/2. We also consider the analogous problem where…
A word is square-free if it does not contain nonempty factors of the form $XX$. In 1906 Thue proved that there exist arbitrarily long square-free words over a $3$-letter alphabet. It was proved recently [7] that among these words there are…
We start by considering binary words containing the minimum possible numbers of squares and antisquares (where an antisquare is a word of the form $x \overline{x}$), and we completely classify which possibilities can occur. We consider…
A square is the concatenation of a nonempty word with itself. A word has period p if its letters at distance p match. The exponent of a nonempty word is the quotient of its length over its smallest period. In this article we give a proof of…
We study words that barely avoid repetitions, for several senses of "barely". A squarefree (respectively, overlap-free, cubefree) word is irreducible if removing any one of its interior letters creates a square (respectively, overlap,…
We consider words over a binary alphabet. A word $w$ is overlap-free if it does not have factors (blocks of consecutive letters) of the form $uvuvu$ for nonempty $u$. Let $M(w)$ denote the number of positions that are middle positions of…
A finite word $w$ is an abelian square if $w = xx^\prime$ with $x^\prime$ a permutation of $x$. In 1972, Entringer, Jackson, and Schatz proved that every binary word of length $k^2 + 6k$ contains an abelian square of length $\geq 2k$. We…
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…
We prove that for any sequence of binary alphabets $\mathcal{A}_1,\mathcal{A}_2,\dots$, there exists a cube-free word $c_1c_2\dots$ so that $c_1\in\mathcal{A}_1,c_2\in\mathcal{A}_2,\dots$. In particular, for every $n$, there are at least…
We characterize the squares occurring in infinite overlap-free binary words and construct various alpha power-free binary words containing infinitely many overlaps.
Building an infinite square-free word by appending one letter at a time while simultaneously avoiding the creation of squares is most likely to fail. When the alphabet has two letters this approach is impossible. When the alphabet has three…
Let $u \shuffle v$ denote the set of all shuffles of the words $u$ and $v$. It is shown that for each integer $n \geq 3$ there exists a square-free ternary word $u$ of length $n$ such that $u\shuffle u$ contains a square-free word. This…
We prove that every concatenation of $10$ or more binary squares contains an overlap. The bound $10$ is best possible. In contrast, over a ternary alphabet, there are infinitely long overlap-free words that consist of a concatenation of…
We consider words $w$ over the alphabet $\Sigma=\{0,1,2\}$. It is shown that there are irreducibly square-free words of all lengths $n$ except 4,5,7 and 12. Such a word is square-free (i.e., it has no repetitions $uu$ as factors), but by…
A word is \emph{square-free} if it does not contain non-empty factors of the form $XX$. In 1906 Thue proved that there exist arbitrarily long square-free words over $3$-letter alphabet. We consider a new type of square-free words. A…
A word is square-free if it does not contain a nonempty word of the form $XX$ as a factor. A famous 1906 result of Thue asserts that there exist arbitrarily long square-free words over a $3$-letter alphabet. We study square-free words with…
We study the structure of the language of binary cube-free words. Namely, we are interested in the cube-free words that cannot be infinitely extended preserving cube-freeness. We show the existence of such words with arbitrarily long finite…
The (bitwise) complement $\overline{x}$ of a binary word $x$ is obtained by changing each $0$ in $x$ to $1$ and vice versa. An $\textit{antisquare}$ is a nonempty word of the form $x\, \overline{x}$. In this paper, we study infinite binary…