Bordered conjugates of words over large alphabets (Q1010701)

Summary: The border correlation function attaches to every word \(w\) a binary word \(\beta(w)\) of the same length where the \(i\)th letter tells whether the \(i\)th conjugate \(w' = vu\) of \(w =uv\) is bordered or not. Let \([{u}]\) denote the set of conjugates of the word \(w\). We show that for a 3-letter alphabet \(A\), the set of \(\beta\)-images equals \(\beta(A^n) = B^* \setminus \left([{ab^{n-1}}] \cup D\right)\) where \(D=\{a^n\}\) if \(n \in \{5,7,9,10,14,17\}\), and otherwise \(D=\emptyset\). Hence the number of \(\beta\)-images is \(B^n_3=2^n-n-m\), where \(m=1\) if \(n\in \{5,7,9,10,14,17\}\) and \(m=0\) otherwise.