Morphisms generating antipalindromic words
Statement
Let be a primitive binary morphism with an antipalinidromic fixed point . Then or is conjugated to a morphism in class .
Context
Candidate 1 of the open problems stated in "Morphisms generating antipalindromic words", extracted for the Scalable Mathematical Discovery run.
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NEW
Problem: Reconstructed statement: over the binary alphabet , let . A finite word is an antipalindrome if , and an infinite word is antipalindromic if it has infinitely many antipalindromic factors. Conjecture 42 asserts:
If is a primitive morphism with an antipalindromic fixed point , then or is conjugate to a morphism in .
Here consists of morphisms
with and antipalindromic, hence all morphisms in are uniform.
consists of morphismswhere , , and .
Result: The literal conjecture is false. Define
Then is primitive, since both images contain both letters. Its fixed point starting in is
because
This word is antipalindromic: for every , is an antipalindrome.
But is not conjugate to a morphism in , since and , while every -morphism is uniform; conjugacy preserves image lengths.
Nor is conjugate to a morphism in . For any ,
so the two lengths have ratio a ratio of odd integers. The ratio is not such a ratio.
The same obstruction applies to :
again ratio . Thus is also not conjugate to any morphism in .
So Conjecture 42 fails because of a periodic fixed point. The minimal natural repair is to add the hypothesis that the fixed point is aperiodic; that is consistent with the paper’s main theorems, which treat the aperiodic case separately.
Citation: Counterexample above is elementary. Definitions are from Ambrož–Masáková–Pelantová, “Morphisms generating antipalindromic words,” arXiv:1906.06174.
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machine: correctscope Full solution as submitted; SMD novelty classification TYPE1
PASS
The counterexample is valid for the conjecture as stated. The morphism is primitive and fixes , which has infinitely many antipalindromic factors. Conjugacy preserves the two image lengths, so neither this morphism nor its square can be conjugate to an -morphism (uniform lengths) or to an -morphism (length ratio odd:odd). Thus it rigorously disproves the literal Conjecture 42.
Novelty assessment
TYPE1
Classification rationale: The counterexample appears genuinely not published as a stated disproof of Conjecture 42, but it is an elementary periodic-word loophole. It uses no new combinatorial method and would at most merit a short erratum/comment: the conjecture needs an aperiodicity or language-level reformulation.
Literature check: I found no published counterexample/corrigendum. The arXiv and European Journal of Combinatorics versions state the conjecture; OpenAlex lists the paper with cited_by_count 0. Searches for the title with “counterexample”, “corrigendum”, “Conjecture 42”, the morphism pattern, and related antipalindromic-morphism terms found only the original paper, bibliographic pages, and the authors’ 2021 seminar slides. Those slides already present a weaker language-level conjecture and note that eventually periodic antipalindromic words are fixed by some A1 morphism, but they do not state this literal counterexample.
Citation: P. Ambrož, Z. Masáková, E. Pelantová, “Morphisms generating antipalindromic words,” European Journal of Combinatorics 89 (2020), 103160; arXiv:1906.06174. Also see Ambrož, “Morphisms Generating Antipalindromic Words,” One World Combinatorics on Words Seminar slides, 2021.
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