The critical exponent of an infinite word w is the supremum of all rational numbers α such that w contains an α-power. We resolve an open question of Krieger and Shallit by showing that for each α>2 there is an infinite ...

We study the combinatorics of vtm, a variant of the Thue-Morse word generated by the non-uniform morphism 0 ↦ 012, 1 ↦ 02, 2 ↦ 1 starting with 0. This infinite ternary sequence appears a lot in the literature and finds ...

We show that binary circular words of length n avoiding 7/3+ powers exist for every sufficiently large n. This is not the case for binary circular words avoiding k+ powers with k < 7/3

Given an infinite word x over an alphabet A, a letter b occurring in x, and a total order \sigma on A, we call the smallest word with respect to \sigma starting with b in the shift orbit closure of x an extremal word of ...

We can compress the word 'banana' as xyyz, where x= 'b', y= 'an',z= 'a'. We say that 'banana' encounters yy. Thus a 'coded' version of yy shows up in 'banana'. The relation 'u encounters w' is transitive, and thus generates ...

We study the combinatorics of vtm, a variant of the Thue-Morse word generated by the non-uniform morphism 0 -> 012,1 -> 02,2 -> 1 starting with 0. This infinite ternary sequence appears a lot in the literature and finds ...

Abstract Consider the set of those binary words with no non-empty factors of the form xxx^R. Du, Mousavi, Schaeffer, and Shallit asked whether this set of words grows polynomially or exponentially with length. In this ...

For every pattern p over the alphabet {x,x^R,y,y^R}, we specify the least k such that p is k-avoidable.

Let t be the infinite fixed point, starting with 1, of the morphism μ:0→01, 1→10. An infinite word over {0,1} is said to be overlap-free if it contains no factor of the form axaxa, where a∈{0,1} and x∈{0,1}∗. We prove that ...