The Maximal Complexity of Quasiperiodic Infinite Words

A quasiperiod of a finite or infinite string is a word whose occurrences cover every part of the string. An infinite string is referred to as quasiperiodic if it has a quasiperiod. We present a characterisation of the set of infinite strings having a certain word q as quasiperiod via a finite language Pq consisting of prefixes of the quasiperiod q. It turns out its star root Pq* is a suffix code having a bounded delay of decipherability. This allows us to calculate the maximal subword (or factor) complexity of quasiperiodic infinite strings having quasiperiod q and further to derive that maximally complex quasiperiodic infinite strings have quasiperiods aba or aabaa. It is shown that, for every length l≥3, a word of the form anban (or anbban if l is even) generates the most complex infinite string having this word as quasiperiod. We give the exact ordering of the lengths l with respect to the achievable complexity among all words of length l.

Computational and Proof Complexity of Partial String Avoidability

The partial string avoidability problem is stated as follows: given a finite set of strings with possible “holes” (wildcard symbols), determine whether there exists a two-sided infinite string containing no substrings from this set, assuming that a hole matches every symbol. The problem is known to be NP-hard and in PSPACE, and this article establishes its PSPACE-completeness. Next, string avoidability over the binary alphabet is interpreted as a version of conjunctive normal form satisfiability problem, where each clause has infinitely many shifted variants. Non-satisfiability of these formulas can be proved using variants of classical propositional proof systems, augmented with derivation rules for shifting proof lines (such as clauses, inequalities, polynomials, etc.). First, it is proved that there is a particular formula that has a short refutation in Resolution with a shift rule but requires classical proofs of exponential size. At the same time, it is shown that exponential lower bounds for classical proof systems can be translated for their shifted versions. Finally, it is shown that superpolynomial lower bounds on the size of shifted proofs would separate NP from PSPACE; a connection to lower bounds on circuit complexity is also established.

QCD gluon vertices from the string-inspired formalism

The Bern–Kosower formalism, developed around 1990 as a novel way of obtaining QCD amplitudes as the limit of infinite string tension of the corresponding string amplitudes, was originally designed as an on-shell formalism. Building on early work by Strassler, the authors have recently shown that this “string-inspired formalism” is extremely efficient also as a tool for the study of off-shell amplitudes in QCD, and in particular for achieving compact form factor decompositions of the [Formula: see text]-gluon vertices. Among other things, this formalism allows one to achieve a manifestly gauge invariant decomposition of these vertices by way of integration-by-parts, rather than the usual tedious analysis of the non-abelian off-shell Ward identities, and to combine the spin zero, half and one cases. Here, we will provide a summary of the method, as well as its application to the three- and four-gluon vertices.