A1 Vertaisarvioitu alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä lehdessä

On a generalization of Abelian equivalence and complexity of infinite words




TekijätJuhani Karhumaki, Aleksi Saarela, Luca Q Zamboni

KustantajaACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE

Julkaisuvuosi2013

JournalJournal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A

Tietokannassa oleva lehden nimiJOURNAL OF COMBINATORIAL THEORY SERIES A

Lehden akronyymiJ COMB THEORY A

Numero sarjassa8

Vuosikerta120

Numero8

Aloitussivu2189

Lopetussivu2206

Sivujen määrä18

ISSN0097-3165

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcta.2013.08.008


Tiivistelmä
In this paper we introduce and study a family of complexity functions of infinite words indexed by k in Z^+ U {+infinity}. Let k in Z^+ U {+infinity} and A be a finite non-empty set. Two finite words u and v in A* are said to be k-Abelian equivalent if for all x in A* of length less than or equal to k, the number of occurrences of x in u is equal to the number of occurrences of x in v. This defines a family of equivalence relations sim_k on A*, bridging the gap between the usual notion of Abelian equivalence (when k = 1) and equality (when k = +infinity). We show that the number of k-Abelian equivalence classes of words of length n grows polynomially, although the degree is exponential in k. Given an infinite word omega in A^N, we consider the associated complexity function P^(k)_omega : N -> N which counts the number of k-Abelian equivalence classes of factors of omega of length n. We show that the complexity function P_k is intimately linked with periodicity. More precisely we define an auxiliary function q^k : N -> N and show that if P^(k)_omega(n) < q^k(n) for some k in Z^+ U {+infinity} and n >= 0, then omega is ultimately periodic. Moreover if omega is aperiodic, then P^(k)_omega(n) = q^k(n) if and only if omega is Sturmian. We also study k-Abelian complexity in connection with repetitions in words. Using Szemeredi's theorem, we show that if omega has bounded k-Abelian complexity, then for every D subset of N with positive upper density and for every positive integer N, there exists a k-Abelian N-power occurring in omega at some position j in D.


Research Areas


Ladattava julkaisu

This is an electronic reprint of the original article.
This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail. Please cite the original version.





Last updated on 2024-26-11 at 23:52