Related papers: Cubefree binary words avoiding long squares
Let $s_n$ be the number of words consisting of the ternary alphabet consisting of the digits 0, 1, and 2 such that no subword (or factor) is a square (a word concatenated with itself, e.g., $11$, $1212$, or $102102$). From computational…
A word of length $n$ is rich if it contains $n$ nonempty palindromic factors. An infinite word is rich if all of its finite factors are rich. Baranwal and Shallit produced an infinite binary rich word with critical exponent $2+\sqrt{2}/2$…
In previous work, Currie and Rampersad showed that the growth of the number of binary words avoiding the pattern xxx^R was intermediate between polynomial and exponential. We now show that the same holds for the growth of the number of…
The Erd\H{o}s-Mollin-Walsh conjecture, asserting the nonexistence of three consecutive powerful integers, remains a celebrated open problem in number theory. A natural line of inquiry, following recent work by Chan (2025), is to investigate…
A graph K is square-free if it contains no four-cycle as a subgraph. A graph K is multiplicative if GxH -> K implies G -> K or H -> K, for all graphs G,H. Here GxH is the tensor (or categorical) graph product and G -> K denotes the…
A bidimensional bifix (in short bibifix) of a square matrix T is a square submatrix of T which occurs in the top-left and bottom-right corners of T. This allows us to extend the definition of bifix-free words and cross-bifix-free set of…
Shallit and Wang studied deterministic automatic complexity of words. They showed that the automatic Hausdorff dimension $I(\mathbf t)$ of the infinite Thue word satisfies $1/3\le I(\mathbf t)\le 2/3$. We improve that result by showing that…
The additive square problem is a relatively famous open problem in the area of combinatorics on words: Does there exist an infinite word over a finite alphabet, such that no two consecutive blocks of the same length have the same sum? In…
We prove that the `connective constant' for ternary square-free words is at least $2^{1/17} = 1.0416 ... $, improving on Brinkhuis and Brandenburg's lower bounds of $2^{1/24}=1.0293 ...$ and $2^{1/22}=1.032 ...$ respectively. This is the…
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…
For a long time, Collatz Conjecture has been assumed to be true, although a formal proof has eluded all efforts to date. In this article, evidence is presented that suggests such an assumption is incorrect. By analysing the stopping times…
The binary Goldbach conjecture asserts that every even integer greater than $4$ is the sum of two primes. In a preceding paper we have proved that there exists a positive integer $K_\alpha$ such that every even integer $x > p_k^2$ can be…
The lexicographically least square-free infinite word on the alphabet of non-negative integers with a given prefix $p$ is denoted $L(p)$. When $p$ is the empty word, this word was shown by Guay-Paquet and Shallit to be the ruler sequence.…
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 x of w and no non-erasing morphism h from Delta^* to Sigma^* such that h(p) = x. Bell and Goh have recently…
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…
In 1994, it was conjectured by Fan and Raspaud that every simple bridgeless cubic graph has three perfect matchings whose intersection is empty. In this paper we answer a question recently proposed by Mkrtchyan and Vardanyan, by giving an…
A conjecture of Berge and Fulkerson (1971) states that every cubic bridgeless graph contains 6 perfect matchings covering each edge precisely twice, which easily implies that every cubic bridgeless graph has three perfect matchings with…
Let $L_{K}(A)$ be the free Lie algebra on a finite alphabet $A$ over a commutative ring $K$ with unity. For a word $u$ in the free monoid $A^{*}$ let $\tilde{u}$ denote its reversal. Two words in $A^{*}$ are called twin (resp. anti-twin) if…
In a recent paper, one of us posed three open problems concerning squarefree arithmetic progressions in infinite words. In this note we solve these problems and prove some additional results.
A permutation is said to be a square if it can be obtained by shuffling two order-isomorphic patterns. The definition is intended to be the natural counterpart to the ordinary shuffle of words and languages. In this paper, we tackle the…