On Pansiot Words Avoiding 3-Repetitions

The recently confirmed Dejean's conjecture about the threshold between avoidable and unavoidable powers of words gave rise to interesting and challenging problems on the structure and growth of threshold words. Over any finite alphabet with k >= 5 letters, Pansiot words avoiding 3-repetitions form a regular language, which is a rather small superset of the set of all threshold words. Using cylindric and 2-dimensional words, we prove that, as k approaches infinity, the growth rates of complexity for these regular languages tend to the growth rate of complexity of some ternary 2-dimensional language. The numerical estimate of this growth rate is about 1.2421.Comment: In Proceedings WORDS 2011, arXiv:1108.341

Ten Conferences WORDS: Open Problems and Conjectures

In connection to the development of the field of Combinatorics on Words, we present a list of open problems and conjectures that were stated during the ten last meetings WORDS. We wish to continually update the present document by adding informations concerning advances in problems solving

Binary Patterns in Binary Cube-Free Words: Avoidability and Growth

The avoidability of binary patterns by binary cube-free words is investigated and the exact bound between unavoidable and avoidable patterns is found. All avoidable patterns are shown to be D0L-avoidable. For avoidable patterns, the growth rates of the avoiding languages are studied. All such languages, except for the overlap-free language, are proved to have exponential growth. The exact growth rates of languages avoiding minimal avoidable patterns are approximated through computer-assisted upper bounds. Finally, a new example of a pattern-avoiding language of polynomial growth is given.Comment: 18 pages, 2 tables; submitted to RAIRO TIA (Special issue of Mons Days 2012

A family of formulas with reversal of high avoidability index

We present an infinite family of formulas with reversal whose avoidability index is bounded between 4 and 5, and we show that several members of the family have avoidability index 5. This family is particularly interesting due to its size and the simple structure of its members. For each k ∈ {4,5}, there are several previously known avoidable formulas (without reversal) of avoidability index k, but they are small in number and they all have rather complex structure.http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S021819671750024

Avoidability of formulas with two variables

In combinatorics on words, a word $w$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is said to avoid a pattern $p$ over an alphabet $\Delta$ of variables if there is no factor $f$ of $w$ such that $f=h(p)$ where $h:\Delta^*\to\Sigma^*$ is a non-erasing morphism. A pattern $p$ is said to be $k$-avoidable if there exists an infinite word over a $k$-letter alphabet that avoids $p$. We consider the patterns such that at most two variables appear at least twice, or equivalently, the formulas with at most two variables. For each such formula, we determine whether it is $2$-avoidable, and if it is $2$-avoidable, we determine whether it is avoided by exponentially many binary words

Why did NEP fail?

Why did NEP fail? I should like to distinguish three ways in which this question has been answered, indicating why the third appears to me to be the most satisfactory. In the first view, NEP was abandoned because it was inconsistent with any further industrial development of a socialist kind, and its abandonment was therefore a rational economic decision. In the second view, strongly reacting against the first, NEP is seen as consistent with a wide variety of development patterns, including the industrial development actually achieved in the inter-war Five Year Plans. Therefore the abandonment of NEP had no strictly economic rationale, but was an outcome of brute political struggles and the formation of the Stalinist political system. In the third view, NEP is seen as inconsistent with the degree and rate of industrialization actually undertaken from 1928 onwards, but contained the possibility of alternative development patterns involving a lesser commitment to industrial growth. In this case, the abandonment of NEP was neither simply rational (according to the first view) nor irrational (according to the second), but was the outcome of a political conflict over the course of Soviet economic development

Growth rate of binary words avoiding xxxRxxx^R

Consider the set of those binary words with no non-empty factors of the form $xxx^R$. Du, Mousavi, Schaeffer, and Shallit asked whether this set of words grows polynomially or exponentially with length. In this paper, we demonstrate the existence of upper and lower bounds on the number of such words of length $n$, where each of these bounds is asymptotically equivalent to a (different) function of the form $Cn^{\lg n+c}$, where $C$, $c$ are constants