A003146 Positions of letter c in the tribonacci word abacabaabacababac... generated by a->ab, b->ac, c->a (cf. A092782).

4, 11, 17, 24, 28, 35, 41, 48, 55, 61, 68, 72, 79, 85, 92, 98, 105, 109, 116, 122, 129, 136, 142, 149, 153, 160, 166, 173, 177, 184, 190, 197, 204, 210, 217, 221, 228, 234, 241, 247, 254, 258, 265, 271, 278, 285, 291, 298, 302, 309, 315, 322, 329, 335, 342, 346, 353, 359

Offset: 1

Author

N. J. A. Sloane

Keywords

• nonn

Comments

Comment from Philippe Deléham, Feb 27 2009: 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.

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 c 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 11. [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 c.
• 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. A003145, A003144, A080843, A092782, A058265, A276791, A276798, A276801, A277721.

First differences are A276792. A278041 (subtract 1 from each term, and use offset 0).

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) = `c` then t1:=[op(t1),i]; fi; od:
# N. J. A. Sloane, Nov 01 2006

Mathematica

StringPosition[SubstitutionSystem[{"a" -> "ab", "b" -> "ac", "c" -> "a"}, "c", {#}][[1]], "c"][[All, 1]] &@ 11 (* Michael De Vlieger, Mar 30 2017, Version 10.2, after JungHwan Min at A003144 *)

Formula

It appears that a(n) = floor(n*t^3) + eps for all n, where t is the tribonacci constant A058265 and eps is 0, 1, 2, or 3. See A277721. - 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

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