Word equations with kth powers of variables
: Saarela Aleksi
Publisher: Academic Press Inc.
: 2019
: Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A
: Journal of Combinatorial Theory. Series A
: 165
: 15
: 31
: 17
: 0097-3165
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcta.2019.01.004
: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/39497480
We prove that if the equality of words holds for three positive values of k, then it holds for all values of k. As a consequence, if holds for three positive values of k, then the words are powers of a common word. The most important method in our proofs is to assign numerical values to the letters, and then study the sums of the letters of words and their prefixes.