A180238 a(n) is the number of distinct billiard words with length n on an alphabet of 3 symbols.

1, 3, 9, 27, 75, 189, 447, 951, 1911, 3621, 6513, 11103, 18267, 29013, 44691, 67251, 98547, 140865, 197679, 272799, 370659, 497403, 658371, 859863, 1110453, 1420527, 1799373, 2260161, 2815401, 3479235, 4269279

Offset: 0

Author

Fred Lunnon, Aug 18 2010

Keywords

• nonn
• more

Comments

Computation: Allan C. Wechsler for n <= 5 (manual), Fred Lunnon for n <= 8 (Maple), Michael Kleber for n <= 30 (Mathematica).

Examples

			For n = 5 there are a(5) = 189 words, permutations on the alphabet {1,2,3} of the 32 words
11111, 11112, 11121, 11123, 11211, 11212, 11213, 11231, 12111, 12112, 12113, 12121, 12122, 12123, 12131, 12132, 12212, 12213, 12221, 12222, 12223, 12231, 12232, 12311, 12312, 12313, 12321, 12322, 12323, 12331, 12332, 12333.
		

Links

• N. Bedaride, Classification of rotations on the torus T^2, Theoretical Computer Science, 385 (2007), 214-225.
• J.-P. Borel, A geometrical Characterization of factors of multidimensional Billiards words and some Applications, Theoretical Computer Science, 380 (2007) 286-303.
• L. Vuillon, Balanced Words, Bull. Belg. Math. Soc., 10 (2003), 787-805.

Crossrefs

See A005598 for 2 symbols, A180239 for 4 symbols.

Programs

Mathematica

(* Number of ways to interleave N elements from 3 arithmetic seqs *)
(* Program due to Michael Kleber, Aug 2010 *)
(* Given a string like "ABCABA", produce a set of inequalities *)
(* about the three arithmetic progressions giving successive A/B/Cs *)
(* The N-th occurrence (1-indexed) of character X corresponds to the value *)
(* BASE[X] + N * DELTA[X] *)
(* In all functions, seq is eg {"A", "B", "C", "A", "B", "A"} *)
(* The arithmetic-progression value of the i-th element of seq *)
value[seq_, i_] := BASE[seq[[i]]] + DELTA[seq[[i]]] * numoccur[seq,i]
numoccur[seq_, i_] := Count[Take[seq,If[i>0,i,Length[seq]+i+1]],seq[[i]]]
(* First element of the seq is greater than anything that would precede it*)
lowerbound[seq_] := (BASE[ # ] < value[seq,1])& /@ Union[seq]
(* Each element of the seq is greater than the previous one *)
upperbound[seq_] := (value[seq,-1] < value[Append[seq,# ],-1])& /@ Union[seq]
(* Last element of the seq is less than anything that would follow it *)
ordering[seq_] := Table[value[seq,i] < value[seq,i+1], {i,Length[seq]-1}]
ineqs[seq_] := Join[ lowerbound[seq], ordering[seq], upperbound[seq] ]
vars[seq_] := Join @@ ({BASE[ # ],DELTA[ # ]}& /@ Union[seq])
witness[seq_] := FindInstance[ ineqs[seq], vars[seq] ]
witness[s_String] := witness[Characters[s]]
(* All obtainable length-n shuffles of three arithmetic seqs: *)
names = {"A", "B", "C"}
shuf[0] := {""}
candidates[n_] := Flatten[Table[ob<>ch, {ob,shuf[n-1]}, {ch, names}]]
shuf[n_] := shuf[n] = Select[ candidates[n], witness[ # ] != {}& ]
(* Typical session *)
In[18]:= Table[Length[shuf[i]],{i,0,12}]
Out[18]= {1, 3, 9, 27, 75, 189, 447, 951, 1911, 3621, 6513, 11103, 18267}
In[19]:= TimeUsed[]/60 Out[19]= 6.73642

Formula

Computation may be expedited by generating only words in which the symbols occur in increasing alphabetic order: this was done in the production version.