Combinatorics, Words and Symbolic Dynamics: 159 (Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications, Series Number 159)

Internationally recognised researchers look at developing trends in combinatorics with applications in the study of words and in symbolic dynamics. They explain the important concepts, providing a clear exposition of some recent results, and emphasise the emerging connections between these different fields. Topics include combinatorics on words, pattern avoidance, graph theory, tilings and theory of computation, multidimensional subshifts, discrete dynamical systems, ergodic theory, numeration systems, dynamical arithmetics, automata theory and synchronised words, analytic combinatorics, continued fractions and probabilistic models. Each topic is presented in a way that links it to the main themes, but then they are also extended to repetitions in words, similarity relations, cellular automata, friezes and Dynkin diagrams. The book will appeal to graduate students, research mathematicians and computer scientists working in combinatorics, theory of computation, number theory, symbolic dynamics, tilings and stringology. It will also interest biologists using text algorithms.

Valérie Berthé is a CNRS Research Director at LIAFA (Laboratoire d'Informatique Algorithmique: Fondements et Applications) at the Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7. She is Deputy Director of the Fondation Sciences Mathématiques de Paris and has authored 70 journal or conference papers. Her main research interests are tilings, numeration systems, substitutive dynamicals systems and symbolic dynamics.

Michel Rigo is a full professor in the Department of Mathematics at the Université de Liège, Belgium, and head of the research group in discrete mathematics. He has authored more than 50 journal or conference papers and two books. His main research interests are formal language theory, numeration systems and combinatorics on words.