11 research outputs found
Sources of Superlinearity in Davenport-Schinzel Sequences
A generalized Davenport-Schinzel sequence is one over a finite alphabet that
contains no subsequences isomorphic to a fixed forbidden subsequence. One of
the fundamental problems in this area is bounding (asymptotically) the maximum
length of such sequences. Following Klazar, let Ex(\sigma,n) be the maximum
length of a sequence over an alphabet of size n avoiding subsequences
isomorphic to \sigma. It has been proved that for every \sigma, Ex(\sigma,n) is
either linear or very close to linear; in particular it is O(n
2^{\alpha(n)^{O(1)}}), where \alpha is the inverse-Ackermann function and O(1)
depends on \sigma. However, very little is known about the properties of \sigma
that induce superlinearity of \Ex(\sigma,n).
In this paper we exhibit an infinite family of independent superlinear
forbidden subsequences. To be specific, we show that there are 17 prototypical
superlinear forbidden subsequences, some of which can be made arbitrarily long
through a simple padding operation. Perhaps the most novel part of our
constructions is a new succinct code for representing superlinear forbidden
subsequences