Volume 185, Issue 1

1. On morphisms preserving palindromic richness

It is known that each word of length $n$ contains at most $n+1$ distinct palindromes. A finite rich word is a word with maximal number of palindromic factors. The definition of palindromic richness can be naturally extended to infinite words. Sturmian words and Rote complementary symmetric sequences form two classes of binary rich words, while episturmian words and words coding symmetric $d$-interval exchange transformations give us other examples on larger alphabets. In this paper we look for morphisms of the free monoid, which allow us to construct new rich words from already known rich words. We focus on morphisms in Class $P_{ret}$. This class contains morphisms injective on the alphabet and satisfying a particular palindromicity property: for every morphism $\varphi$ in the class there exists a palindrome $w$ such that $\varphi(a)w$ is a first complete return word to $w$ for each letter $a$. We characterize $P_{ret}$ morphisms which preserve richness over a binary alphabet. We also study marked $P_{ret}$ morphisms acting on alphabets with more letters. In particular we show that every Arnoux-Rauzy morphism is conjugated to a morphism in Class $P_{ret}$ and that it preserves richness.

2. Self-stabilisation of cellular automata on tilings

Given a finite set of local constraints, we seek a cellular automaton (i.e., a local and uniform algorithm) that self-stabilises on the configurations that satisfy these constraints. More precisely, starting from a finite perturbation of a valid configuration, the cellular automaton must eventually fall back into the space of valid configurations where it remains still. We allow the cellular automaton to use extra symbols, but in that case, the extra symbols can also appear in the initial finite perturbation. For several classes of local constraints (e.g., $k$-colourings with $k\neq 3$, and North-East deterministic constraints), we provide efficient self-stabilising cellular automata with or without additional symbols that wash out finite perturbations in linear or quadratic time, but also show that there are examples of local constraints for which the self-stabilisation problem is inherently hard. We note that the optimal self-stabilisation speed is the same for all local constraints that are isomorphic to one another. We also consider probabilistic cellular automata rules and show that in some cases, the use of randomness simplifies the problem. In the deterministic case, we show that if finite perturbations are corrected in linear time, then the cellular automaton self-stabilises even starting from a random perturbation of a valid configuration, that is, when errors in the initial configuration occur independently with a sufficiently low density.

3. Spanning Structures in Walker--Breaker Games

We study the biased $(2:b)$ Walker--Breaker games, played on the edge set of the complete graph on $n$ vertices, $K_n$. These games are a variant of the Maker--Breaker games with the restriction that Walker (playing the role of Maker) has to choose her edges according to a walk. We look at the two standard graph games -- the Connectivity game and the Hamilton Cycle game and show that Walker can win both games even when playing against Breaker whose bias is of the order of magnitude $n/ \ln n$.