Abelian Powers and Repetitions in Sturmian Words

Richomme, Saari and Zamboni (J. Lond. Math. Soc. 83: 79-95, 2011) proved that at every position of a Sturmian word starts an abelian power of exponent $k$ for every $k > 0$. We improve on this result by studying the maximum exponents of abelian powers and abelian repetitions (an abelian repetition is an analogue of a fractional power) in Sturmian words. We give a formula for computing the maximum exponent of an abelian power of abelian period $m$ starting at a given position in any Sturmian word of rotation angle $\alpha$. vAs an analogue of the critical exponent, we introduce the abelian critical exponent $A(s_\alpha)$ of a Sturmian word $s_\alpha$ of angle $\alpha$ as the quantity $A(s_\a…