Subword complexity and power avoidance

Abstract

We begin a systematic study of the relations between subword complexity of infinite words and their power avoidance. Among other things, we show that – the Thue–Morse word has the minimum possible subword complexity over all overlap-free binary words and all ( [Formula presented] )-power-free binary words, but not over all ( [Formula presented] )+-power-free binary words; – the twisted Thue–Morse word has the maximum possible subword complexity over all overlap-free binary words, but no word has the maximum subword complexity over all ( [Formula presented] )-power-free binary words; – if some word attains the minimum possible subword complexity over all square-free ternary words, then one such word is the ternary Thue word; – the recently constructed 1-2-bonacci word has the minimum possible subword complexity over all symmetric square-free ternary words. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.