1. On the probability of existence of a universal cycle or a universal word for a set of words
- Author
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Chen, Herman Z. Q., Kitaev, Sergey, and Sun, Brian Y.
- Subjects
Mathematics - Combinatorics ,05A05, 05C45 ,F.2.2 - Abstract
A universal cycle, or u-cycle, for a given set of words is a circular word that contains each word from the set exactly once as a contiguous subword. The celebrated de Bruijn sequences are a particular case of such a u-cycle, where a set in question is the set $A^n$ of all words of length $n$ over a $k$-letter alphabet $A$. A universal word, or u-word, is a linear, i.e. non-circular, version of the notion of a u-cycle, and it is defined similarly. Removing some words in $A^n$ may, or may not, result in a set of words for which u-cycle, or u-word, exists. The goal of this paper is to study the probability of existence of the universal objects in such a situation. We give lower bounds for the probability in general cases, and also derive explicit answers for the case of removing up to two words in $A^n$, or the case when $k=2$ and $n\leq 4$., Comment: 17 pages, 4 tables
- Published
- 2019