A characterization of balanced episturmian sequences

It is well known that Sturmian sequences are the aperiodic sequences that are balanced over a 2-letter alphabet. They are also characterized by their complexity: they have exactly $(n+1)$ factors of length $n$. One possible generalization of Sturmian sequences is the set of infinite sequences over a $k$-letter alphabet, $k \geq 3$, which are closed under reversal and have at most one right special factor for each length. This is the set of episturmian sequences. These are not necessarily balanced over a $k$-letter alphabet, nor are they necessarily aperiodic. In this paper, we characterize balanced episturmian sequences, periodic or not, and prove Fraenkel's conjecture for the class of episturmian sequences. This conjecture was first introduced in number theory and has remained unsolved for more than 30 years. It states that for a fixed $k> 2$, there is only one way to cover $\Z$ by $k$ Beatty sequences. The problem can be translated to combinatorics on words: for a $k$-letter alphabet, there exists only one balanced sequence up to letter permutation that has different letter frequencies

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

Various Properties of Sturmian Words

This overview paper is devoted to Sturmian words. The first part summarizes different characterizations of Sturmian words. Besides the well known theorem of Hedlund and Morse it also includes recent results on the characterization of Sturmian words using return words or palindromes. The second part deals with substitution invariant Sturmian words, where we present our recent results. We generalize one-sided Sturmian words using the cut-and-project scheme and give a full characterization of substitution invariant Sturmian words.

Matrices of 3iet preserving morphisms

We study matrices of morphisms preserving the family of words coding 3-interval exchange transformations. It is well known that matrices of morphisms preserving sturmian words (i.e. words coding 2-interval exchange transformations with the maximal possible factor complexity) form the monoid $\{\boldsymbol{M}\in\mathbb{N}^{2\times 2} | \det\boldsymbol{M}=\pm1\} = \{\boldsymbol{M}\in\mathbb{N}^{2\times 2} | \boldsymbol{M}\boldsymbol{E}\boldsymbol{M}^T = \pm\boldsymbol{E}\}$, where $\boldsymbol{E} = (\begin{smallmatrix}0&1 -1&0\end{smallmatrix})$. We prove that in case of exchange of three intervals, the matrices preserving words coding these transformations and having the maximal possible subword complexity belong to the monoid $\{\boldsymbol{M}\in\mathbb{N}^{3\times 3} | \boldsymbol{M}\boldsymbol{E}\boldsymbol{M}^T = \pm\boldsymbol{E},\ \det\boldsymbol{M}=\pm 1\}$, where$\boldsymbol{E} = \Big(\begin{smallmatrix}0&1&1 -1&0&1 -1&-1&0\end{smallmatrix}\Big)$.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure

Extremal properties of (epi)Sturmian sequences and distribution modulo 1

Starting from a study of Y. Bugeaud and A. Dubickas (2005) on a question in distribution of real numbers modulo 1 via combinatorics on words, we survey some combinatorial properties of (epi)Sturmian sequences and distribution modulo 1 in connection to their work. In particular we focus on extremal properties of (epi)Sturmian sequences, some of which have been rediscovered several times

Balance and Abelian complexity of the Tribonacci word

G. Rauzy showed that the Tribonacci minimal subshift generated by the morphism $\tau: 0\mapsto 01, 1\mapsto 02 and 2\mapsto 0$ is measure-theoretically conjugate to an exchange of three fractal domains on a compact set in $R^2$, each domain being translated by the same vector modulo a lattice. In this paper we study the Abelian complexity AC(n) of the Tribonacci word $t$ which is the unique fixed point of $\tau$. We show that $AC(n)\in {3,4,5,6,7}$ for each $n\geq 1$, and that each of these five values is assumed. Our proof relies on the fact that the Tribonacci word is 2-balanced, i.e., for all factors $U$ and $V$ of $t$ of equal length, and for every letter $a \in {0,1,2}$, the number of occurrences of $a$ in $U$ and the number of occurrences of $a$ in $V$ differ by at most 2. While this result is announced in several papers, to the best of our knowledge no proof of this fact has ever been published. We offer two very different proofs of the 2-balance property of $t$. The first uses the word combinatorial properties of the generating morphism, while the second exploits the spectral properties of the incidence matrix of $\tau$.Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure. This is an extended version of 0904.2872v