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arxiv: 1204.2180 · v1 · pith:W6RF6T7Anew · submitted 2012-04-10 · 🧮 math.CO · cs.DM· q-bio.QM

A regularity lemma and twins in words

classification 🧮 math.CO cs.DMq-bio.QM
keywords lengthidenticalsubwordswordalphabetlemmaregularitysigma
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For a word $S$, let $f(S)$ be the largest integer $m$ such that there are two disjoints identical (scattered) subwords of length $m$. Let $f(n, \Sigma) = \min \{f(S): S \text{is of length} n, \text{over alphabet} \Sigma \}$. Here, it is shown that \[2f(n, \{0,1\}) = n-o(n)\] using the regularity lemma for words. I.e., any binary word of length $n$ can be split into two identical subwords (referred to as twins) and, perhaps, a remaining subword of length $o(n)$. A similar result is proven for $k$ identical subwords of a word over an alphabet with at most $k$ letters.

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