A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Fine and Wilf's theorem for k-abelian periods
Authors: Juhani Karhumaki, Svetlana Puzynina, Aleksi Saarela
Publisher: WORLD SCIENTIFIC PUBL CO PTE LTD
Publication year: 2013
Journal: International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science
Journal name in source: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FOUNDATIONS OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
Journal acronym: INT J FOUND COMPUT S
Number in series: 7
Volume: 24
Issue: 7
First page : 1135
Last page: 1152
Number of pages: 18
ISSN: 0129-0541
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0129054113400352
Two words u and v are k-abelian equivalent if they contain the same number of occurrences of each factor of length at most k. This leads to a hierarchy of equivalence relations on words which lie properly in between the equality and abelian equality. The goal of this paper is to analyze Fine and Wilf's periodicity theorem with respect to these equivalence relations. Fine and Wilf's theorem tells exactly how long a word with two periods p and q can be without having the greatest common divisor of p and q as a period. Recently, the same question has been studied for abelian periods. In this paper we show that for k-abelian periods the situation is similar to the abelian case: In general, there is no bound for the lengths of such words, but the values of the parameters p, q and k for which the length is bounded can be characterized. In the latter case we provide nontrivial upper and lower bounds for the maximal lengths of such words. In some cases (e.g., for k = 2) we found the maximal length precisely.
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