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Return words are a classical tool for studying shift spaces with low factor complexity. In recent years, their projection inside groups have attracted some attention, for instance in the context of dendric shift spaces, of generation of pseudorandom numbers (through the welldoc property), and of profinite invariants of shift spaces. Aiming at unifying disparate works, we introduce a notion of stability for subgroups generated by return words. Within this framework, we revisit several existing results and generalize some of them. We also study general aspects of stability, such as decidability or closure under certain operations.

Dendric shift spaces simultaneously generalize codings of regular interval exchanges and episturmian shift spaces, themselves both generalizations of Sturmian words. One of the key properties enforced by dendricity is the Return Theorem. In this paper, we prove its converse, providing the following natural algebraic perspective on dendricity: A minimal shift space is dendric if and only if every set of return words is a basis of the free group over the alphabet., Comment: 7 pages

An important question in dynamical systems is the classification problem, i.e., the ability to distinguish between two isomorphic systems. In this work, we study the topological factors between a family of multidimensional substitutive subshifts generated by morphisms with uniform support. We prove that it is decidable to check whether two minimal aperiodic substitutive subshifts are isomorphic. The strategy followed in this work consists of giving a complete description of the factor maps between these subshifts. Then, we deduce some interesting consequences on coalescence, automorphism groups, and the number of aperiodic symbolic factors of substitutive subshifts. We also prove other combinatorial results on these substitutions, such as the decidability of defining a subshift, the computability of the constant of recognizability, and the conjugacy between substitutions with different supports., Comment: Changes given by the referee's comments

Dendric shifts are defined by combinatorial restrictions of the extensions of the words in their languages. This family generalizes well-known families of shifts such as Sturmian shifts, Arnoux-Rauzy shifts and codings of interval exchange transformations. It is known that any minimal dendric shift has a primitive $\mathcal{S}$-adic representation where the morphisms in $\mathcal{S}$ are positive tame automorphisms of the free group generated by the alphabet. In this paper we give an $\mathcal{S}$-adic characterization of this family by means of two finite graphs. As an application, we are able to decide whether a shift space generated by a uniformly recurrent morphic word is (eventually) dendric., Comment: 28 pages

Dendric shifts are defined by combinatorial restrictions of the extensions of the words in their languages. This family generalizes well-known families of shifts such as Sturmian shifts, Arnoux-Rauzy shifts and codings of interval exchange transformations. It is known that any minimal dendric shift has a primitive $\mathcal{S}$-adic representation where the morphisms in $\mathcal{S}$ are positive tame automorphisms of the free group generated by the alphabet. In this paper we investigate those $\mathcal{S}$-adic representations, heading towards an $\mathcal{S}$-adic characterization of this family. We obtain such a characterization in the ternary case, involving a directed graph with 2 vertices., Comment: 40 pages

We study ternary sequences associated with a multidimensional continued fraction algorithm introduced by the first author. The algorithm is defined by two matrices and we show that it is measurably isomorphic to the shift on the set $\{1,2\}^\mathbb{N}$ of directive sequences. For a given set $\mathcal{C}$ of two substitutions, we show that there exists a $\mathcal{C}$-adic sequence for every vector of letter frequencies or, equivalently, for every directive sequence. We show that their factor complexity is at most $2n+1$ and is $2n+1$ if and only if the letter frequencies are rationally independent if and only if the $\mathcal{C}$-adic representation is primitive. It turns out that in this case, the sequences are dendric. We also prove that $\mu$-almost every $\mathcal{C}$-adic sequence is balanced, where $\mu$ is any shift-invariant ergodic Borel probability measure on $\{1,2\}^\mathbb{N}$ giving a positive measure to the cylinder $[12121212]$. We also prove that the second Lyapunov exponent of the matrix cocycle associated with the measure $\mu$ is negative., Comment: 42 pages, 9 figures. Extended and augmented version of arXiv:1707.02741

Two words are $k$-binomially equivalent whenever they share the same subwords, i.e., subsequences, of length at most $k$ with the same multiplicities. This is a refinement of both abelian equivalence and the Simon congruence. The $k$-binomial complexity of an infinite word $\mathbf{x}$ maps the integer $n$ to the number of classes in the quotient, by this $k$-binomial equivalence relation, of the set of factors of length $n$ occurring in $\mathbf{x}$. This complexity measure has not been investigated very much. In this paper, we characterize the $k$-binomial complexity of the Thue--Morse word. The result is striking, compared to more familiar complexity functions. Although the Thue--Morse word is aperiodic, its $k$-binomial complexity eventually takes only two values. In this paper, we first obtain general results about the number of occurrences of subwords appearing in iterates of the form $\Psi^\ell(w)$ for an arbitrary morphism $\Psi$. We also thoroughly describe the factors of the Thue--Morse word by introducing a relevant new equivalence relation.

Classification is a central problem for dynamical systems, in particular for families that arise in a wide range of topics, like substitution subshifts. It is important to be able to distinguish whether two such subshifts are isomorphic, but the existing invariants are not sufficient for this purpose. We first show that given two minimal substitution subshifts, there exists a computable constant $R$ such that any factor map between these subshifts (if any) is the composition of a factor map with a radius smaller than $R$ and some power of the shift map. Then we prove that it is decidable to check whether a given sliding block code is a factor map between two prescribed minimal substitution subshifts. As a consequence of these two results, we provide an algorithm that, given two minimal substitution subshifts, decides whether one is a factor of the other and, as a straightforward corollary, whether they are isomorphic., Comment: 65 pages

The 11th Summer Workshop on Multimodal Interfaces eNTERFACE 2015 was hosted by the Numediart Institute of Creative Technologies of the University of Mons from August 10th to September 2015. During the four weeks, students and researchers from all over the world came together in the Numediart Institute of the University of Mons to work on eight selected projects structured around intelligent interfaces. Eight projects were selected and their reports are shown here., Comment: 159 pages

We prove the existence of a ternary sequence of factor complexity $2n+1$ for any given vector of rationally independent letter frequencies. Such sequences are constructed from an infinite product of two substitutions according to a particular Multidimensional Continued Fraction algorithm. We show that this algorithm is conjugate to a well-known one, the Selmer algorithm. Experimentations (Baldwin, 1992) suggest that their second Lyapunov exponent is negative which presages finite balance properties., Comment: 12 pages, 11th International Conference on Words (Montreal, September 11-15, 2017)

We count the number of distinct (scattered) subwords occurring in the base-b expansion of the non-negative integers. More precisely, we consider the sequence $(S_b(n))_{n\ge 0}$ counting the number of positive entries on each row of a generalization of the Pascal triangle to binomial coefficients of base-$b$ expansions. By using a convenient tree structure, we provide recurrence relations for $(S_b(n))_{n\ge 0}$ leading to the $b$-regularity of the latter sequence. Then we deduce the asymptotics of the summatory function of the sequence $(S_b(n))_{n\ge 0}$., Comment: 22 pages, 9 figures

This paper is about counting the number of distinct (scattered) subwords occurring in a given word. More precisely, we consider the generalization of the Pascal triangle to binomial coefficients of words and the sequence $(S(n))_{n\ge 0}$ counting the number of positive entries on each row. By introducing a convenient tree structure, we provide a recurrence relation for $(S(n))_{n\ge 0}$. This leads to a connection with the $2$-regular Stern-Brocot sequence and the sequence of denominators occurring in the Farey tree. Then we extend our construction to the Zeckendorf numeration system based on the Fibonacci sequence. Again our tree structure permits us to obtain recurrence relations for and the F-regularity of the corresponding sequence., Comment: 28 pages, 10 figures

Many digital functions studied in the literature, e.g., the summatory function of the base-$k$ sum-of-digits function, have a behavior showing some periodic fluctuation. Such functions are usually studied using techniques from analytic number theory or linear algebra. In this paper we develop a method based on exotic numeration systems and we apply it on two examples motivated by the study of generalized Pascal triangles and binomial coefficients of words., Comment: 32 pages, 27 figures

We introduce a generalization of Pascal triangle based on binomial coefficients of finite words. These coefficients count the number of times a word appears as a subsequence of another finite word. Similarly to the Sierpi\'nski gasket that can be built as the limit set, for the Hausdorff distance, of a convergent sequence of normalized compact blocks extracted from Pascal triangle modulo $2$, we describe and study the first properties of the subset of $[0, 1] \times [0, 1]$ associated with this extended Pascal triangle modulo a prime $p$., Comment: 20 pages, 15 figures

Moss\'e proved that primitive morphisms are recognizable. In this paper we give a computable upper bound for the constant of recognizability of such a morphism. This bound can be expressed only using the cardinality of the alphabet and the length of the longest image under the morphism of a letter.

Motivated by applications in the theory of numeration systems and recognizable sets of integers, this paper deals with morphic words when erasing morphisms are taken into account. Cobham showed that if an infinite word $w =g(f^\omega(a))$ is the image of a fixed point of a morphism $f$ under another morphism $g$, then there exist a non-erasing morphism $\sigma$ and a coding $\tau$ such that $w =\tau(\sigma^\omega(b))$. Based on the Perron theorem about asymptotic properties of powers of non-negative matrices, our main contribution is an in-depth study of the growth type of iterated morphisms when one replaces erasing morphisms with non-erasing ones. We also explicitly provide an algorithm computing $\sigma$ and $\tau$ from $f$ and $g$., Comment: 25 pages

We introduce the notion of specular sets which are subsets of groups called here specular and which form a natural generalization of free groups. These sets are an abstract generalization of the natural codings of linear involutions. We prove several results concerning the subgroups generated by return words and by maximal bifix codes in these sets., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1405.3529

We investigate the relation between bifix codes and interval exchange transformations. We prove that the class of natural codings of regular interval echange transformations is closed under maximal bifix decoding., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1305.0127, arXiv:1308.5396

Feng and Wang showed that two homogeneous iterated function systems in $\mathbb{R}$ with multiplicatively independent contraction ratios necessarily have different attractors. In this paper, we extend this result to graph directed iterated function systems in $\mathbb{R}^n$ with contraction ratios that are of the form $\frac{1}{\beta}$, for integers $\beta$. By using a result of Boigelot et al., this allows us to give a proof of a conjecture of Adamczewski and Bell. In doing so, we link the graph directed iterated function systems to B\"uchi automata. In particular, this link extends to real numbers $\beta$. We introduce a logical formalism that permits to characterize sets of $\mathbb{R}^n$ whose representations in base $\beta$ are recognized by some B\"uchi automata. This result depends on the algebraic properties of the base: $\beta$ being a Pisot or a Parry number. The main motivation of this work is to draw a general picture representing the different frameworks where an analogue of Cobham's theorem is known., Comment: 30 pages; updated version, including a new introduction and some new references

Given a set $F$ of words, one associates to each word $w$ in $F$ an undirected graph, called its extension graph, and which describes the possible extensions of $w$ on the left and on the right. We investigate the family of sets of words defined by the property of the extension graph of each word in the set to be acyclic or connected or a tree. We prove that in a uniformly recurrent tree set, the sets of first return words are bases of the free group on the alphabet. Concerning acyclic sets, we prove as a main result that a set $F$ is acyclic if and only if any bifix code included in $F$ is a basis of the subgroup that it generates., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1305.0127, arXiv:1011.5369, Monatsh. Math. (2015)

In [Ergodic Theory Dynam. System, 16 (1996) 663--682], S. Ferenczi proved that any minimal subshift with first difference of complexity bounded by 2 is $S$-adic with $\card S \leq 3^{27}$. In this paper, we improve this result by giving an $S$-adic charaterization of these subshifts with a set $S$ of 5 morphisms, solving by this way the $S$-adic conjecture for this particular case.

We describe in this paper a connection between bifix codes, symbolic dynamical systems and free groups. This is in the spirit of the connection established previously for the symbolic systems corresponding to Sturmian words. We introduce a class of sets of factors of an infinite word with linear factor complexity containing Sturmian sets and regular interval exchange sets, namemly the class of tree sets. We prove as a main result that for a uniformly recurrent tree set $F$, a finite bifix code $X$ on the alphabet $A$ is $F$-maximal of $F$-degree $d$ if and only if it is the basis of a subgroup of index $d$ of the free group on $A$., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1011.5369, arXiv:1305.0120

In this note we apply a substantial improvement of a result of S. Ferenczi on $S$-adic subshifts to give Bratteli-Vershik representations of these subshifts., Comment: 6 pages

The $S$-adic conjecture claims that there exists a condition $C$ such that a sequence has a sub-linear complexity if and only if it is an $S$-adic sequence satisfying Condition $C$ for some finite set $S$ of morphisms. We present an overview of the factor complexity of $S$-adic sequences and we give some examples that either illustrate some interesting properties or that are counter-examples to what could be believed to be "a good Condition $C$"., Comment: 25