On the superimposition of Christoffel words

Initially stated in terms of Beatty sequences, the Fraenkel conjecture can be reformulated as follows: for a $k$-letter alphabet A, with a fixed $k \geq 3$, there exists a unique balanced infinite word, up to letter permutations and shifts, that has mutually distinct letter frequencies. Motivated by the Fraenkel conjecture, we study in this paper whether two Christoffel words can be superimposed. Following from previous works on this conjecture using Beatty sequences, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the superimposition of two Christoffel words having same length, and more generally, of two arbitrary Christoffel words. Moreover, for any two superimposable Christoffel words, we give the number of different possible superimpositions and we prove that there exists a superimposition that works for any two superimposable Christoffel words. Finally, some new properties of Christoffel words are obtained as well as a geometric proof of a classic result concerning the money problem, using Christoffel words

P-partitions and a multi-parameter Klyachko idempotent

Because they play a role in our understanding of the symmetric group algebra, Lie idempotents have received considerable attention. The Klyachko idempotent has attracted interest from combinatorialists, partly because its definition involves the major index of permutations. For the symmetric group S_n, we look at the symmetric group algebra with coefficients from the field of rational functions in n variables q_1,..., q_n. In this setting, we can define an n-parameter generalization of the Klyachko idempotent, and we show it is a Lie idempotent in the appropriate sense. Somewhat surprisingly, our proof that it is a Lie element emerges from Stanley's theory of P-partitions.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure. Final version: incorporates suggestions of the referee, no changes to the result

Number of right ideals and a qq-analogue of indecomposable permutations

We prove that the number of right ideals of codimension $n$ in the algebra of noncommutative Laurent polynomials in two variables over the finite field $\mathbb F\_q$ is equal to $(q-1)^{n+1} q^{\frac{(n+1)(n-2)}{2}}\sum\_\theta q^{inv(\theta)}$, where the sum is over all indecomposable permutations in $S\_{n+1}$ and where $inv(\theta)$stands for the number of inversions of $\theta$.Comment: submitte

The shuffle algebra on the factors of a word is free

AbstractThe shuffle algebra generated by the factors of a given word is shown to be free, with transcendance degree equal to the dimension of a Lie algebra canonically associated to this word

Séries formelles et algèbres syntactiques

AbstractThe notion of the syntactic monoid is well known to be very important for formal languages, and in particular for rational languages; examples of that importance are Kleene's theorem, Schützenberger's theorem about aperiodic monoid and Eilenberg's theorem about varieties. We introduce here, for formal power series, a similar object: to each formal power series we associate its syntactic algebra. The Kleene-Schützenberger theorem can then be stated in the following way: a series is rational if and only if its syntactic algebra has finite dimension. A rational central series (this means that the coefficient of a word depends only on its conjugacy class) is a linear combination of characters if and only if its syntactic algebra is semisimple. Fatou properties of rational series in one variable are extended to series in several variables and a special case of the rationality of the Hadamard quotient of two series is positively answered. The correspondence between pseudovarieties of finite monoids and varieties of rational languages, as studied by Eilenberg, is extended between pseudovarieties of finite dimensional algebras and varieties of rational series. We study different kinds of varieties that are defined by closure properties and prove a theorem similar to Schützenberger's theorem on aperiodic monoids