Closed, palindromic, rich, privileged, trapezoidal, and balanced words in automatic sequences (Q2635089)

Summary: We prove that the property of being closed (resp., palindromic, rich, privileged trapezoidal, balanced) is expressible in first-order logic for automatic (and some related) sequences. It therefore follows that the characteristic function of those \(n\) for which an automatic sequence \(\mathbf x\) has a closed (resp., palindromic, privileged, rich, trapezoidal, balanced) factor of length \(n\) is itself automatic. For privileged words this requires a new characterization of the privileged property. We compute the corresponding characteristic functions for various famous sequences, such as the Thue-Morse sequence, the Rudin-Shapiro sequence, the ordinary~ paperfolding sequence, the period-doubling sequence, and the Fibonacci sequence. Finally, we also show that the function counting the total number of palindromic factors in the prefix of length \(n\) of a \(k\)-automatic sequence is not \(k\)-synchronized.