Palindromes in infinite ternary words

We study infinite words u over an alphabet A satisfying the property P : P(n)+ P(n+1) = 1+ #A for any n in N, where P(n) denotes the number of palindromic factors of length n occurring in the language of u. We study also infinite words satisfying a stronger property PE: every palindrome of u has exactly one palindromic extension in u. For binary words, the properties P and PE coincide and these properties characterize Sturmian words, i.e., words with the complexity C(n)=n+1 for any n in N. In this paper, we focus on ternary infinite words with the language closed under reversal. For such words u, we prove that if C(n)=2n+1 for any n in N, then u satisfies the property P and moreover u is rich in palindromes. Also a sufficient condition for the property PE is given. We construct a word demonstrating that P on a ternary alphabet does not imply PE.Comment: 12 page

Palindromic complexity of codings of rotations

International audienceWe study the palindromic complexity of infinite words obtained by coding rotations on partitions of the unit circle by inspecting the return words. The main result is that every coding of rotations on two intervals is full, that is, it realizes the maximal palindromic complexity. As a byproduct, a slight improvement about return words in codings of rotations is obtained: every factor of a coding of rotations on two intervals has at most 4 complete return words, where the bound is realized only for a finite number of factors. We also provide a combinatorial proof for the special case of complementary-symmetric Rote sequences by considering both palindromes and antipalindromes occurring in it

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

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

Factor versus palindromic complexity of uniformly recurrent infinite words

We study the relation between the palindromic and factor complexity of infinite words. We show that for uniformly recurrent words one has P(n)+P(n+1) \leq \Delta C(n) + 2, for all n \in N. For a large class of words it is a better estimate of the palindromic complexity in terms of the factor complexity then the one presented by Allouche et al. We provide several examples of infinite words for which our estimate reaches its upper bound. In particular, we derive an explicit prescription for the palindromic complexity of infinite words coding r-interval exchange transformations. If the permutation \pi connected with the transformation is given by \pi(k)=r+1-k for all k, then there is exactly one palindrome of every even length, and exactly r palindromes of every odd length.Comment: 16 pages, submitted to Theoretical Computer Scienc

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

Generalized Thue-Morse words and palindromic richness

We prove that the generalized Thue-Morse word $\mathbf{t}_{b,m}$ defined for $b \geq 2$ and $m \geq 1$ as $\mathbf{t}_{b,m} = (s_b(n) \mod m)_{n=0}^{+\infty}$, where $s_b(n)$ denotes the sum of digits in the base-$b$ representation of the integer $n$, has its language closed under all elements of a group $D_m$ isomorphic to the dihedral group of order $2m$ consisting of morphisms and antimorphisms. Considering simultaneously antimorphisms $\Theta \in D_m$, we show that $\mathbf{t}_{b,m}$ is saturated by $\Theta$-palindromes up to the highest possible level. Using the terminology generalizing the notion of palindromic richness for more antimorphisms recently introduced by the author and E. Pelantov\'a, we show that $\mathbf{t}_{b,m}$ is $D_m$-rich. We also calculate the factor complexity of $\mathbf{t}_{b,m}$.Comment: 11 page