A characterization of power-free morphisms (Q1062467)

A word is called k th power-free if it does not contain any non-empty factor \(u^ k\). A morphism is k th power-free if it preserves k th power-free words. A morphism is power-free if it is k th power-free for every \(k>1\). We show that it is decidable whether a morphism is power- free; more precisely, we prove that a morphism h is power-free iff: h is a square-free morphism and, for each letter a, the image \(h(a^ 2)\) is cube-free.