Open and closed factors of Arnoux-Rauzy words

Abstract: A finite word

u

is called closed if its longest repeated prefix has exactly two occurrences in

u,

once as a prefix and once as a suffix. We study the function

f_{x}^{c} : m a t h b b N i g h t a r r o w m a t h b b N

which counts the number of closed factors of each length in an infinite word

x .

We derive an explicit formula for

f_{x}^{c}

in case

x

is an Arnoux-Rauzy word. As a consequence we prove that

l i m i n f_{n i g h t a r r o w i n f t y} f_{x}^{c} (n) = + i n f t y .

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