A003145 Positions of letter b in the tribonacci word abacabaabacababac... generated by a->ab, b->ac, c->a (cf. A092782).

2, 6, 9, 13, 15, 19, 22, 26, 30, 33, 37, 39, 43, 46, 50, 53, 57, 59, 63, 66, 70, 74, 77, 81, 83, 87, 90, 94, 96, 100, 103, 107, 111, 114, 118, 120, 124, 127, 131, 134, 138, 140, 144, 147, 151, 155, 158, 162, 164, 168, 171, 175, 179, 182, 186, 188, 192, 195, 199, 202, 206, 208

Offset: 1

Author

N. J. A. Sloane

Keywords

• nonn

Comments

A003144, A003145, A003146 may be defined as follows. Consider the map psi: a -> ab, b -> ac, c -> a. The image (or trajectory) of a under repeated application of this map is the infinite word a, b, a, c, a, b, a, a, b, a, c, a, b, a, b, a, c, ... (setting a = 1, b = 2, c = 3 gives A092782). The indices of a, b, c give respectively A003144, A003145, A003146. - Philippe Deléham, Feb 27 2009

The infinite word may also be defined as the limit S_oo where S_1 = a, S_n = psi(S_{n-1}). Or, by S_1 = a, S_2 = ab, S_3 = abac, and thereafter S_n = S_{n-1} S_{n-2} S_{n-3}. It is the unique word such that S_oo = psi(S_oo).

Also indices of b in the sequence closed under a -> abac, b -> aba, c -> ab; starting with a(1) = a. - Philippe Deléham, Apr 16 2004

Theorem: A number m is in this sequence iff the tribonacci representation of m-1 ends with 01. [Duchene and Rigo, Remark 2.5] - N. J. A. Sloane, Mar 02 2019

References

• Eric Duchêne, Aviezri S. Fraenkel, Vladimir Gurvich, Nhan Bao Ho, Clark Kimberling, Urban Larsson, Wythoff Visions, Games of No Chance, Vol. 5; MSRI Publications, Vol. 70 (2017), pages 101-153.
• N. J. A. Sloane and Simon Plouffe, The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, Academic Press, 1995 (includes this sequence).

Links

• N. J. A. Sloane, Table of n, a(n) for n = 1..10609
• Elena Barcucci, Luc Belanger and Srecko Brlek, On tribonacci sequences, Fib. Q., 42 (2004), 314-320.
• L. Carlitz, R. Scoville and V. E. Hoggatt, Jr., Fibonacci representations of higher order, Fib. Quart., 10 (1972), 43-69. The present sequence is called b.
• F. Michel Dekking, Jeffrey Shallit, and N. J. A. Sloane, Queens in exile: non-attacking queens on infinite chess boards, Electronic J. Combin., 27:1 (2020), #P1.52.
• Eric Duchêne and Michel Rigo, A morphic approach to combinatorial games: the Tribonacci case. RAIRO - Theoretical Informatics and Applications, 42, 2008, pp 375-393. doi:10.1051/ita:2007039. [Also available from Numdam]
• A. J. Hildebrand, Junxian Li, Xiaomin Li, Yun Xie, Almost Beatty Partitions, arXiv:1809.08690 [math.NT], 2018.
• Wolfdieter Lang, The Tribonacci and ABC Representations of Numbers are Equivalent, arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.09787 [math.NT], 2018.

Crossrefs

Cf. A003144, A003146, A080843, A092782, A058265, A276799, A276800, A276794, A276797.

First differences give A276789. A278040 (subtract 1 from each term, and use offset 1).

For tribonacci representations of numbers see A278038.

Programs

Maple

M:=17; S[1]:=`a`; S[2]:=`ab`; S[3]:=`abac`;
for n from 4 to M do S[n]:=cat(S[n-1], S[n-2], S[n-3]); od:
t0:=S[M]: l:=length(t0); t1:=[];
for i from 1 to l do if substring(t0,i..i) = `b` then t1:=[op(t1),i]; fi; od: # N. J. A. Sloane

Mathematica

StringPosition[SubstitutionSystem[{"a" -> "ab", "b" -> "ac", "c" -> "a"}, "b", {#}][[1]], "b"][[All, 1]] &@9 (* Michael De Vlieger, Mar 30 2017, Version 10.2, after JungHwan Min at A003144 *)

Formula

It appears that a(n) = floor(n*t^2) + eps for all n, where t is the tribonacci constant A058265 and eps is 0, 1, or 2. See A276799. - N. J. A. Sloane, Oct 28 2016. This is true - see the Dekking et al. paper. - N. J. A. Sloane, Jul 22 2019

Extensions

More terms from Philippe Deléham, Apr 16 2004

Corrected by T. D. Noe and N. J. A. Sloane, Nov 01 2006

Entry revised by N. J. A. Sloane, Oct 13 2016