An extension of the Lyndon–Schützenberger result to pseudoperiodic words

AbstractOne of the particularities of information encoded as DNA strands is that a string u contains basically the same information as its Watson–Crick complement, denoted here as θ(u). Thus, any expression consisting of repetitions of u and θ(u) can be considered in some sense periodic. In this paper, we give a generalization of Lyndon and Schützenberger’s classical result about equations of the form ul=vnwm, to cases where both sides involve repetitions of words as well as their complements. Our main results show that, for such extended equations, if l⩾5,n,m⩾3, then all three words involved can be expressed in terms of a common word t and its complement θ(t). Moreover, if l⩾5, then n=m=3 is an optimal bound. These results are established based on a complete characterization of all possible overlaps between two expressions that involve only some word u and its complement θ(u), which is also obtained in this paper

On the Pseudoperiodic Extension of u^l = v^m w^n

We investigate the solution set of the pseudoperiodic extension of the classical Lyndon and Sch"utzenberger word equations. Consider u_1 ... u_l = v_1 ... v_m w_1 ... w_n, where u_i is in {u, theta(u)} for all 1 = 12 or m,n >= 5 and either m and n are not both even or not all u_i\u27s are equal, all solutions are pseudoperiodic

Avoiding and Enforcing Repetitive Structures in Words

The focus of this thesis is on the study of repetitive structures in words, a central topic in the area of combinatorics on words. The results presented in the thesis at hand are meant to extend and enrich the existing theory concerning the appearance and absence of such structures. In the first part we examine whether these structures necessarily appear in infinite words over a finite alphabet. The repetitive structures we are concerned with involve functional dependencies between the parts that are repeated. In particular, we study avoidability questions of patterns whose repetitive structure is disguised by the application of a permutation. This novel setting exhibits the surprising behaviour that avoidable patterns may become unavoidable in larger alphabets. The second and major part of this thesis deals with equations on words that enforce a certain repetitive structure involving involutions in their solution set. Czeizler et al. (2009) introduced a generalised version of the classical equations u` Æ vmwn that were studied by Lyndon and Schützenberger. We solve the last two remaining and most challenging cases and thereby complete the classification of these equations in terms of the repetitive structures appearing in the admitted solutions. In the final part we investigate the influence of the shuffle operation on words avoiding ordinary repetitions. We construct finite and infinite square-free words that can be shuffled with themselves in a way that preserves squarefreeness. We also show that the repetitive structure obtained by shuffling a word with itself is avoidable in infinite words

À l'intersection de la combinatoire des mots et de la géométrie discrète : palindromes, symétries et pavages

Dans cette thèse, différents problèmes de la combinatoire des mots et de géométrie discrète sont considérés. Nous étudions d'abord l'occurrence des palindromes dans les codages de rotations, une famille de mots incluant entre autres les mots sturmiens et les suites de Rote. En particulier, nous démontrons que ces mots sont pleins, c'est-à-dire qu'ils réalisent la complexité palindromique maximale. Ensuite, nous étudions une nouvelle famille de mots, appelés mots pseudostandards généralisés, qui sont générés à l'aide d'un opérateur appelé clôture pseudopalindromique itérée. Nous présentons entre autres une généralisation d'une formule décrite par Justin qui permet de générer de façon linéaire et optimale un mot pseudostandard généralisé. L'objet central, le f-palindrome ou pseudopalindrome est un indicateur des symétries présentes dans les objets géométriques. Dans les derniers chapitres, nous nous concentrons davantage sur des problèmes de nature géométrique. Plus précisément, nous donnons la solution à deux conjectures de Provençal concernant les pavages par translation, en exploitant la présence dé palindromes et de périodicité locale dans les mots de contour. À la fin de plusieurs chapitres, différents problèmes ouverts et conjectures sont brièvement présentés. \ud ______________________________________________________________________________ \ud MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Palindrome, pseudopalindrome, clôture pseudopalindromique itérée, codages de rotations, symétries, chemins discrets, pavages