Rich, Sturmian, and trapezoidal words

In this paper we explore various interconnections between rich words, Sturmian words, and trapezoidal words. Rich words, first introduced in arXiv:0801.1656 by the second and third authors together with J. Justin and S. Widmer, constitute a new class of finite and infinite words characterized by having the maximal number of palindromic factors. Every finite Sturmian word is rich, but not conversely. Trapezoidal words were first introduced by the first author in studying the behavior of the subword complexity of finite Sturmian words. Unfortunately this property does not characterize finite Sturmian words. In this note we show that the only trapezoidal palindromes are Sturmian. More generally we show that Sturmian palindromes can be characterized either in terms of their subword complexity (the trapezoidal property) or in terms of their palindromic complexity. We also obtain a similar characterization of rich palindromes in terms of a relation between palindromic complexity and subword complexity.Comment: 7 page

Languages invariant under more symmetries: overlapping factors versus palindromic richness

Factor complexity $\mathcal{C}$ and palindromic complexity $\mathcal{P}$ of infinite words with language closed under reversal are known to be related by the inequality $\mathcal{P}(n) + \mathcal{P}(n+1) \leq 2 + \mathcal{C}(n+1)-\mathcal{C}(n)$ for any $n\in \mathbb{N}$\,. Word for which the equality is attained for any $n$ is usually called rich in palindromes. In this article we study words whose languages are invariant under a finite group $G$ of symmetries. For such words we prove a stronger version of the above inequality. We introduce notion of $G$-palindromic richness and give several examples of $G$-rich words, including the Thue-Morse sequence as well.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figur

Proof of Brlek-Reutenauer conjecture

Brlek and Reutenauer conjectured that any infinite word u with language closed under reversal satisfies the equality 2D(u) = \sum_{n=0}^{\infty}T_u(n) in which D(u) denotes the defect of u and T_u(n) denotes C_u(n+1)-C_u(n) +2 - P_U(n+1) - P_u(n), where C_u and P_u are the factor and palindromic complexity of u, respectively. This conjecture was verified for periodic words by Brlek and Reutenauer themselves. Using their results for periodic words, we have recently proved the conjecture for uniformly recurrent words. In the present article we prove the conjecture in its general version by a new method without exploiting the result for periodic words.Comment: 9 page

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.Comment: Accepted for publication in Theoretical Computer Scienc

On Theta-palindromic Richness

In this paper we study generalization of the reversal mapping realized by an arbitrary involutory antimorphism $\Theta$. It generalizes the notion of a palindrome into a $\Theta$-palindrome -- a word invariant under $\Theta$. For languages closed under $\Theta$ we give the relation between $\Theta$-palindromic complexity and factor complexity. We generalize the notion of richness to $\Theta$-richness and we prove analogous characterizations of words that are $\Theta$-rich, especially in the case of set of factors invariant under $\Theta$. A criterion for $\Theta$-richness of $\Theta$-episturmian words is given together with other examples of $\Theta$-rich words.Comment: 14 page