Unclustered BWTs of any Length over Non-Binary Alphabets

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Fici, Gabriele, Gabory, Estéban, Romana, Giuseppe, Sciortino, Marinella
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Fici, Gabriele
Gabory, Estéban
Romana, Giuseppe
Sciortino, Marinella
author_facet Fici, Gabriele
Gabory, Estéban
Romana, Giuseppe
Sciortino, Marinella
contents We prove that for every integer $n > 0$ and for every alphabet $Σ_k$ of size $k \geq 3$, there exists a necklace of length $n$ whose Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) is completely unclustered, i.e., it consists of exactly $n$ runs with no two consecutive equal symbols. These words represent the worst-case behavior of the BWT for clustering, since the number of BWT runs is maximized. We also establish a lower bound on their number. This contrasts with the binary case, where the existence of infinitely many completely unclustered BWTs is still an open problem, related to Artin's conjecture on primitive roots.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_20879
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Unclustered BWTs of any Length over Non-Binary Alphabets
Fici, Gabriele
Gabory, Estéban
Romana, Giuseppe
Sciortino, Marinella
Discrete Mathematics
Data Structures and Algorithms
Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Combinatorics
We prove that for every integer $n > 0$ and for every alphabet $Σ_k$ of size $k \geq 3$, there exists a necklace of length $n$ whose Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) is completely unclustered, i.e., it consists of exactly $n$ runs with no two consecutive equal symbols. These words represent the worst-case behavior of the BWT for clustering, since the number of BWT runs is maximized. We also establish a lower bound on their number. This contrasts with the binary case, where the existence of infinitely many completely unclustered BWTs is still an open problem, related to Artin's conjecture on primitive roots.
title Unclustered BWTs of any Length over Non-Binary Alphabets
topic Discrete Mathematics
Data Structures and Algorithms
Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20879