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 present an infinite family of formulas with reversal whose avoidability index is bounded between 4 and 5, and we show that several members of the family have avoidability index 5. This family is particularly interesting ...

Ochem, Rampersad, and Shallit gave various examples of infinite words avoiding what they called approximate repetitions. An approximate repetition is a factor of the form x x', where x and x' are close to being identical. ...

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 show that Dejean’s conjecture holds for n ≥ 27. This brings the final resolution of the conjecture by the approach of Moulin Ollagnier within range of the computationally feasible.

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 prove that the subsets of Nd that are S-recognizable for all abstract numeration systems S are exactly the 1-recognizable sets. This generalizes a result of Lecomte and Rigo in the one-dimensional setting.

While a characterization of unavoidable formulas (without reversal) is well-known, little is known about the avoidability of formulas with reversal in general. In this article, we characterize the unavoidable formulas ...

We consider various shuffling and unshuffling operations on languages and words, and examine their closure properties. Although the main goal is to provide some good and novel exercises and examples for undergraduate formal ...

The study of combinatorics on words dates back at least to the beginning of the 20th century and the work of Axel Thue. Thue was the first to give an example of an infinite word over a three letter alphabet that contains ...