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Words with factor somplexity $2n+1$ and minimal critical exponent

Published: July 12, 2025 | arXiv ID: 2507.09387v1

By: James D. Currie

Potential Business Impact:

Finds patterns in words that are very hard to break.

We show that words with factor complexity 2n+1 have critical exponent at least $\mu$, where $\mu=2+\frac{1}{\lambda^2-1}= 2.4808726\cdots$, where $\lambda=1.7548777$ is the real zero of $x^3-2x+x-1=0$. This confirms a conjecture of Shallit and Shur.

Page Count
27 pages

Category
Mathematics:
Combinatorics