Antisquares and Critical Exponents

The (bitwise) complement $\overline{x}$ of a binary word $x$ is obtained by changing each $0$ in $x$ to $1$ and vice versa. An $\textit{antisquare}$ is a nonempty word of the form $x\, \overline{x}$. In this paper, we study infinite binary words that do not contain arbitrarily large antisquares. For...

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Main Authors: Aseem Baranwal, James Currie, Lucas Mol, Pascal Ochem, Narad Rampersad, Jeffrey Shallit
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science 2023-09-01
Series:Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science
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Online Access:http://dmtcs.episciences.org/10063/pdf
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author Aseem Baranwal
James Currie
Lucas Mol
Pascal Ochem
Narad Rampersad
Jeffrey Shallit
author_facet Aseem Baranwal
James Currie
Lucas Mol
Pascal Ochem
Narad Rampersad
Jeffrey Shallit
author_sort Aseem Baranwal
collection DOAJ
description The (bitwise) complement $\overline{x}$ of a binary word $x$ is obtained by changing each $0$ in $x$ to $1$ and vice versa. An $\textit{antisquare}$ is a nonempty word of the form $x\, \overline{x}$. In this paper, we study infinite binary words that do not contain arbitrarily large antisquares. For example, we show that the repetition threshold for the language of infinite binary words containing exactly two distinct antisquares is $(5+\sqrt{5})/2$. We also study repetition thresholds for related classes, where "two" in the previous sentence is replaced by a larger number. We say a binary word is $\textit{good}$ if the only antisquares it contains are $01$ and $10$. We characterize the minimal antisquares, that is, those words that are antisquares but all proper factors are good. We determine the growth rate of the number of good words of length $n$ and determine the repetition threshold between polynomial and exponential growth for the number of good words.
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publisher Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science
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spelling doaj-art-3d9f4a915cd44c29b73e8397b2fc2d262025-08-20T03:42:37ZengDiscrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer ScienceDiscrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science1365-80502023-09-01vol. 25:2Combinatorics10.46298/dmtcs.1006310063Antisquares and Critical ExponentsAseem BaranwalJames CurrieLucas MolPascal OchemNarad RampersadJeffrey ShallitThe (bitwise) complement $\overline{x}$ of a binary word $x$ is obtained by changing each $0$ in $x$ to $1$ and vice versa. An $\textit{antisquare}$ is a nonempty word of the form $x\, \overline{x}$. In this paper, we study infinite binary words that do not contain arbitrarily large antisquares. For example, we show that the repetition threshold for the language of infinite binary words containing exactly two distinct antisquares is $(5+\sqrt{5})/2$. We also study repetition thresholds for related classes, where "two" in the previous sentence is replaced by a larger number. We say a binary word is $\textit{good}$ if the only antisquares it contains are $01$ and $10$. We characterize the minimal antisquares, that is, those words that are antisquares but all proper factors are good. We determine the growth rate of the number of good words of length $n$ and determine the repetition threshold between polynomial and exponential growth for the number of good words.http://dmtcs.episciences.org/10063/pdfmathematics - combinatoricscomputer science - discrete mathematicscomputer science - formal languages and automata theory
spellingShingle Aseem Baranwal
James Currie
Lucas Mol
Pascal Ochem
Narad Rampersad
Jeffrey Shallit
Antisquares and Critical Exponents
Discrete Mathematics & Theoretical Computer Science
mathematics - combinatorics
computer science - discrete mathematics
computer science - formal languages and automata theory
title Antisquares and Critical Exponents
title_full Antisquares and Critical Exponents
title_fullStr Antisquares and Critical Exponents
title_full_unstemmed Antisquares and Critical Exponents
title_short Antisquares and Critical Exponents
title_sort antisquares and critical exponents
topic mathematics - combinatorics
computer science - discrete mathematics
computer science - formal languages and automata theory
url http://dmtcs.episciences.org/10063/pdf
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AT jeffreyshallit antisquaresandcriticalexponents