Numeration systems without a dominant root and regularity

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Charlier, Émilie, Kreczman, Savinien
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866915675759443968
author Charlier, Émilie
Kreczman, Savinien
author_facet Charlier, Émilie
Kreczman, Savinien
contents Positional numeration systems are a large family of numeration systems used to represent natural numbers. Whether the set of all representations forms a regular language or not is one of the most important questions that can be asked of such a system. This question was investigated in a 1998 article by Hollander. Central to his analysis is a property linking positional numeration systems and Rényi numeration systems, which use a real base to represent real numbers. However, this link only exists when the initial numeration system has a dominant root, which is not a necessary condition for regularity. In this article, we show a more general link between positional numeration systems and alternate base numeration systems, a family generalizing Rényi systems. We then take advantage of this link to provide a full characterization of those numeration systems that generate a regular language. We also discuss the effectiveness of our method, and comment Hollander's results and conjecture in the light of ours.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_13180
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Numeration systems without a dominant root and regularity
Charlier, Émilie
Kreczman, Savinien
Number Theory
Combinatorics
11A67, 68Q45, 11K16, 11A63
Positional numeration systems are a large family of numeration systems used to represent natural numbers. Whether the set of all representations forms a regular language or not is one of the most important questions that can be asked of such a system. This question was investigated in a 1998 article by Hollander. Central to his analysis is a property linking positional numeration systems and Rényi numeration systems, which use a real base to represent real numbers. However, this link only exists when the initial numeration system has a dominant root, which is not a necessary condition for regularity. In this article, we show a more general link between positional numeration systems and alternate base numeration systems, a family generalizing Rényi systems. We then take advantage of this link to provide a full characterization of those numeration systems that generate a regular language. We also discuss the effectiveness of our method, and comment Hollander's results and conjecture in the light of ours.
title Numeration systems without a dominant root and regularity
topic Number Theory
Combinatorics
11A67, 68Q45, 11K16, 11A63
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13180