Fine and Wilf's theorem for k-abelian periods

Abstract

<p> Two words u and v are k-abelian equivalent if they contain the same number of occurrences of each factor of length at most k. This leads to a hierarchy of equivalence relations on words which lie properly in between the equality and abelian equality. The goal of this paper is to analyze Fine and Wilf&#39;s periodicity theorem with respect to these equivalence relations. Fine and Wilf&#39;s theorem tells exactly how long a word with two periods p and q can be without having the greatest common divisor of p and q as a period. Recently, the same question has been studied for abelian periods. In this paper we show that for k-abelian periods the situation is similar to the abelian case: In general, there is no bound for the lengths of such words, but the values of the parameters p, q and k for which the length is bounded can be characterized. In the latter case we provide nontrivial upper and lower bounds for the maximal lengths of such words. In some cases (e.g., for k = 2) we found the maximal length precisely.</p>