A note on abelian returns in rotation words (Q2437858)

A very interesting study is conducted concerning abelian return words in rotation words, i.e. factors of an infinite word that separates two consecutive occurences of the word. Using suitable permutations of their letters, two such words can be characterized as abelian equivalent, so the general class of rotation words is examined. The main result of the present paper gives a characterization of the points for which the resulting rotation word has the property that the set of abelian returns to prefixes is finite. Also, an alternative proof of one direction of the characterization of Sturmian words is obtained by applying the ``three gap theorem''.