On the aperiodic avoidability of binary patterns with variables and reversals (Q2358690)

Let \(E\), \(\Sigma\) be two distinct alphabets. We say that a pattern \(p\in E^{\ast }\) occurs in a word \(w\in\Sigma^{\ast}\) (or \(w\) meets \(p)\) if, for some non-erasing morphism \(\varphi:E^{\ast}\rightarrow\Sigma^{\ast},\) \(\varphi(p)\) is a factor of \(w\). The word avoids \(p\) if no such factor of \(w\) exists. The author investigates a restricted version of pattern occurrences, considering for \(E\) the alphabets \(\left\{ \alpha,\alpha^{R}\right\} \) (of unary patterns with reversals) and \(\left\{ \alpha,\beta,\alpha^{R},\beta ^{R}\right\}\) (of binary patterns with reversals), and morphisms satisfying \(\varphi\left( \alpha^{R}\right) =\varphi\left( \alpha\right) ^{R}\) and \(\varphi\left( \beta^{R}\right) =\varphi\left( \beta\right) ^{R}\) only. Various particular cases were investigated before. The present paper presents a survey regarding the avoidability of binary patterns with reversals and provides a complete characterisation of the avoidability of such unary and binary patterns with respect to aperiodic infinite words.