Palindromic length of words with many periodic palindromes (Q2040420)

Let \(\operatorname{PL}(u)\) denote the palindromic length of a finite word \(u\), that is, the minimal number of palindromes such that \(u\) is their concatenation. The main result of the article is the following: if \(a\), \(b\) are palindromes, \(b\) is nonempty, \(u\) is a nonempty suffix of \(b\), \(|ab|\) is the minimal period of \(aba\), and \(j\) is a positive integer with \(j\geq 3\operatorname{PL}(u)\), then \(\operatorname{PL}(u(ab) j )-\operatorname{PL}(u)\geq 0\). This result may be useful for a proof of the 2013 conjecture of [\textit{A. E. Frid} et al., Adv. Appl. Math. 50, No. 5, 737--748 (2013; Zbl 1285.68133)] that if the palindromic length of factors of an infinite word is bounded, then the word is ultimately periodic. Another result of the paper, Corollary 1, straighforwardly follows from results of [Zbl 1285.68133]. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1465.68022].