34 research outputs found
Cyclic Complexity of Words
We introduce and study a complexity function on words called
\emph{cyclic complexity}, which counts the number of conjugacy classes of
factors of length of an infinite word We extend the well-known
Morse-Hedlund theorem to the setting of cyclic complexity by showing that a
word is ultimately periodic if and only if it has bounded cyclic complexity.
Unlike most complexity functions, cyclic complexity distinguishes between
Sturmian words of different slopes. We prove that if is a Sturmian word and
is a word having the same cyclic complexity of then up to renaming
letters, and have the same set of factors. In particular, is also
Sturmian of slope equal to that of Since for some
implies is periodic, it is natural to consider the quantity
We show that if is a Sturmian word,
then We prove however that this is
not a characterization of Sturmian words by exhibiting a restricted class of
Toeplitz words, including the period-doubling word, which also verify this same
condition on the limit infimum. In contrast we show that, for the Thue-Morse
word , Comment: To appear in Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series
Quasiperiodic and Lyndon episturmian words
Recently the second two authors characterized quasiperiodic Sturmian words,
proving that a Sturmian word is non-quasiperiodic if and only if it is an
infinite Lyndon word. Here we extend this study to episturmian words (a natural
generalization of Sturmian words) by describing all the quasiperiods of an
episturmian word, which yields a characterization of quasiperiodic episturmian
words in terms of their "directive words". Even further, we establish a
complete characterization of all episturmian words that are Lyndon words. Our
main results show that, unlike the Sturmian case, there is a much wider class
of episturmian words that are non-quasiperiodic, besides those that are
infinite Lyndon words. Our key tools are morphisms and directive words, in
particular "normalized" directive words, which we introduced in an earlier
paper. Also of importance is the use of "return words" to characterize
quasiperiodic episturmian words, since such a method could be useful in other
contexts.Comment: 33 pages; minor change
On a generalization of Abelian equivalence and complexity of infinite words
In this paper we introduce and study a family of complexity functions of
infinite words indexed by k \in \ints ^+ \cup {+\infty}. Let k \in \ints ^+
\cup {+\infty} and be a finite non-empty set. Two finite words and
in are said to be -Abelian equivalent if for all of length
less than or equal to the number of occurrences of in is equal to
the number of occurrences of in This defines a family of equivalence
relations on bridging the gap between the usual notion of
Abelian equivalence (when ) and equality (when We show that
the number of -Abelian equivalence classes of words of length grows
polynomially, although the degree is exponential in Given an infinite word
\omega \in A^\nats, we consider the associated complexity function \mathcal
{P}^{(k)}_\omega :\nats \rightarrow \nats which counts the number of
-Abelian equivalence classes of factors of of length We show
that the complexity function is intimately linked with
periodicity. More precisely we define an auxiliary function q^k: \nats
\rightarrow \nats and show that if for
some k \in \ints ^+ \cup {+\infty} and the is ultimately
periodic. Moreover if is aperiodic, then if and only if is Sturmian. We also
study -Abelian complexity in connection with repetitions in words. Using
Szemer\'edi's theorem, we show that if has bounded -Abelian
complexity, then for every D\subset \nats with positive upper density and for
every positive integer there exists a -Abelian power occurring in
at some position $j\in D.