Suffix Automata and Standard Sturmian Words

Blumer et al. showed (cf. [3,2]) that the suffix automaton of a word w must have at least |w|+1 states and at most 2|w|-1 states. In this paper we characterize the language L of all binary words w whose minimal suffix automaton S(w) has exactly |w| + 1 states; they are precisely all prefixes of standard Sturmian words. In particular, we give an explicit construction of suffix automaton of words that are palindromic prefixes of standard words. Moreover, we establish a necessary and sufficient condition on S(w) which ensures that if w ∈ L and a ∈ {0, 1} then wa ∈ L. By using such a condition, we show how to construct the automaton S(wa) from S(w). More generally, we provide a simple construct…

A Note on a Conjecture of Duval and Sturmian Words

We prove a long standing conjecture of Duval in the special case of Sturmian words. Mathematics Subject Classication. ??????????????. Let U be a nonempty word on a nite alphabet A: A nonempty word B dierent from U is called a border of U if B is both a prex and sux of U: We say U is bordered if U admits a border, otherwise U is said to be unbordered. For example, U = 011001011 is bordered by the factor 011; while 00010001001 is unbordered. An integer 1 k n is a period of a word U = U1 :::U n if and only if for all 1 i n k we have Ui = Ui+k. It is easy to see that k is a period of U if and only if the prex B of U of length n k is a border of U or is empty. Let (U) denote the smallest period …

Cyclic Complexity of Words

We introduce and study a complexity function on words $c_x(n),$ called \emph{cyclic complexity}, which counts the number of conjugacy classes of factors of length $n$ of an infinite word $x.$ We extend the well-known Morse-Hedlund theorem to the setting of cyclic complexity by showing that a word is ultimately periodic if and only if it has bounded cyclic complexity. Unlike most complexity functions, cyclic complexity distinguishes between Sturmian words of different slopes. We prove that if $x$ is a Sturmian word and $y$ is a word having the same cyclic complexity of $x,$ then up to renaming letters, $x$ and $y$ have the same set of factors. In particular, $y$ is also Sturmian of slope equ…

On the least number of palindromes contained in an infinite word

We investigate the least number of palindromic factors in an infinite word. We first consider general alphabets, and give answers to this problem for periodic and non-periodic words, closed or not under reversal of factors. We then investigate the same problem when the alphabet has size two.

Anti-powers in infinite words

In combinatorics of words, a concatenation of $k$ consecutive equal blocks is called a power of order $k$. In this paper we take a different point of view and define an anti-power of order $k$ as a concatenation of $k$ consecutive pairwise distinct blocks of the same length. As a main result, we show that every infinite word contains powers of any order or anti-powers of any order. That is, the existence of powers or anti-powers is an unavoidable regularity. Indeed, we prove a stronger result, which relates the density of anti-powers to the existence of a factor that occurs with arbitrary exponent. As a consequence, we show that in every aperiodic uniformly recurrent word, anti-powers of ev…

The sequence of open and closed prefixes of a Sturmian word

A finite word is closed if it contains a factor that occurs both as a prefix and as a suffix but does not have internal occurrences, otherwise it is open. We are interested in the {\it oc-sequence} of a word, which is the binary sequence whose $n$-th element is $0$ if the prefix of length $n$ of the word is open, or $1$ if it is closed. We exhibit results showing that this sequence is deeply related to the combinatorial and periodic structure of a word. In the case of Sturmian words, we show that these are uniquely determined (up to renaming letters) by their oc-sequence. Moreover, we prove that the class of finite Sturmian words is a maximal element with this property in the class of binar…

On the number of Arnoux–Rauzy words