$α$-$β$-Factorization and the Binary Case of Simon's Congruence

In 1991 H\'ebrard introduced a factorization of words that turned out to be a powerful tool for the investigation of a word's scattered factors (also known as (scattered) subwords or subsequences). Based on this, first Karandikar and Schnoebelen introduced the notion of $k$-richness and later on Barker et al. the notion of $k$-universality. In 2022 Fleischmann et al. presented a generalization of the arch factorization by intersecting the arch factorization of a word and its reverse. While the authors merely used this factorization for the investigation of shortest absent scattered factors, in this work we investigate this new $\alpha$-$\beta$-factorization as such. We characterize the famous Simon congruence of $k$-universal words in terms of $1$-universal words. Moreover, we apply these results to binary words. In this special case, we obtain a full characterization of the classes and calculate the index of the congruence. Lastly, we start investigating the ternary case, present a full list of possibilities for $\alpha\beta\alpha$-factors, and characterize their congruence.

m-Nearly k-Universal Words -- Investigating Simon Congruence

Determining the index of the Simon congruence is a long outstanding open problem. Two words $u$ and $v$ are called Simon congruent if they have the same set of scattered factors, which are parts of the word in the correct order but not necessarily consecutive, e.g., $\mathtt{oath}$ is a scattered factor of $\mathtt{logarithm}$. Following the idea of scattered factor $k$-universality, we investigate $m$-nearly $k$-universality, i.e., words where $m$ scattered factors of length $k$ are absent, w.r.t. Simon congruence. We present a full characterisation as well as the index of the congruence for $m=1$. For $m\neq 1$, we show some results if in addition $w$ is $(k-1)$-universal as well as some further insights for different $m$.