On the Number of Abelian Bordered Words

in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (in press)

In the literature, many bijections between (labeled) Motzkin paths and various other combinatorial objects are studied. We consider abelian (un)bordered words and show the connection with irreducible ... [more ▼]

In the literature, many bijections between (labeled) Motzkin paths and various other combinatorial objects are studied. We consider abelian (un)bordered words and show the connection with irreducible symmetric Motzkin paths and paths in Z not returning to the origin. This study can be extended to abelian unbordered words over an arbitrary alphabet and we derive expressions to compute the number of these words. In particular, over a 3-letter alphabet, the connection with paths in the triangular lattice is made. Finally, we study the lengths of the abelian unbordered factors occurring in the Thue--Morse word. [less ▲]

Some properties of abelian return words (long abstract)

Conference (2012, September 11)

We investigate some properties of abelian return words as recently introduced by Puzynina and Zamboni. In particular, we obtain a characterization of Sturmian words with non-null intercept in terms of the ... [more ▼]

We investigate some properties of abelian return words as recently introduced by Puzynina and Zamboni. In particular, we obtain a characterization of Sturmian words with non-null intercept in terms of the finiteness of the set of abelian return words to all prefixes. We describe this set of abelian returns for the Fibonacci word but also for the 2-automatic Thue–Morse word. We also investigate the relationship existing between abelian complexity and finiteness of the set of abelian returns to all prefixes. We end this paper by considering the notion of abelian derived sequence. It turns out that, for the Thue–Morse word, the set of abelian derived sequences is infinite. [less ▲]