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Crucial words for abelian powers
Book chapter

Crucial words for abelian powers

A. Glen, B. Halldórsson and S. Kitaev
Developments in Language Theory, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5583, pp.264-275
Springer
2009
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02737-6_21
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Abstract

Let k ≥ 2 be an integer. An abelian k -th power is a word of the form X 1 X 2 ⋯ X k where X i is a permutation of X 1 for 2 ≤ i ≤ k. In this paper, we consider crucial words for abelian k-th powers, i.e., finite words that avoid abelian k-th powers, but which cannot be extended to the right by any letter of their own alphabets without creating an abelian k-th power. More specifically, we consider the problem of determining the minimal length of a crucial word avoiding abelian k-th powers. This problem has already been solved for abelian squares by Evdokimov and Kitaev [6], who showed that a minimal crucial word over an n-letter alphabet An={1,2,…,n} avoiding abelian squares has length 4n − 7 for n ≥ 3. Extending this result, we prove that a minimal crucial word over An avoiding abelian cubes has length 9n − 13 for n ≥ 5, and it has length 2, 5, 11, and 20 for n = 1,2,3, and 4, respectively. Moreover, for n ≥ 4 and k ≥ 2, we give a construction of length k 2(n − 1) − k − 1 of a crucial word over An avoiding abelian k-th powers. This construction gives the minimal length for k = 2 and k = 3.

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