Search results for "Christoffel word"

A Characterization of Bispecial Sturmian Words

2012

A finite Sturmian word w over the alphabet {a,b} is left special (resp. right special) if aw and bw (resp. wa and wb) are both Sturmian words. A bispecial Sturmian word is a Sturmian word that is both left and right special. We show as a main result that bispecial Sturmian words are exactly the maximal internal factors of Christoffel words, that are words coding the digital approximations of segments in the Euclidean plane. This result is an extension of the known relation between central words and primitive Christoffel words. Our characterization allows us to give an enumerative formula for bispecial Sturmian words. We also investigate the minimal forbidden words for the set of Sturmian wo…

Moore Automata and Epichristoffel Words

2012

On the Structure of Bispecial Sturmian Words

2013

A balanced word is one in which any two factors of the same length contain the same number of each letter of the alphabet up to one. Finite binary balanced words are called Sturmian words. A Sturmian word is bispecial if it can be extended to the left and to the right with both letters remaining a Sturmian word. There is a deep relation between bispecial Sturmian words and Christoffel words, that are the digital approximations of Euclidean segments in the plane. In 1997, J. Berstel and A. de Luca proved that \emph{palindromic} bispecial Sturmian words are precisely the maximal internal factors of \emph{primitive} Christoffel words. We extend this result by showing that bispecial Sturmian wo…

Epichristoffel Words and Minimization of Moore Automata

2014

This paper is focused on the connection between the combinatorics of words and minimization of automata. The three main ingredients are the epichristoffel words, Moore automata and a variant of Hopcroft’s algorithm for their minimization. Epichristoffel words defined in [14] generalize some properties of circular sturmian words. Here we prove a factorization property and the existence of the reduction tree, that uniquely identifies the structure of the word. Furthermore, in the paper we investigate the problem of the minimization of Moore automata by defining a variant of Hopcroft’s minimization algorithm. The use of this variant makes simpler the computation of the running time and consequ…