This series is devoted to significant topics or themes that have wide application in mathematics or mathematical science and for which a detailed development of the abstract theory is less important than a thorough and concrete exploration of the implications and applications. Books in the Encyclopedia of Mathematics and its Applications cover their subjects comprehensively. Less important results may be summarised as exercises at the ends of chapters, For technicalities, readers can be referred to the bibliography, which is expected to be comprehensive. As a result, volumes are encyclopedic references or manageable guides to major subjects.

This collaborative book presents recent trends on the study of sequences, including combinatorics on words and symbolic dynamics, and new interdisciplinary links to group theory and number theory. Other chapters branch out from those areas into subfields of theoretical computer science, such as complexity theory and theory of automata. The book is built around four general themes: number theory and sequences, word combinatorics, normal numbers, and group theory. Those topics are rounded out by investigations into automatic and regular sequences, tilings and theory of computation, discrete dynamical systems, ergodic theory, numeration systems, automaton semigroups, and amenable groups. This volume is intended for use by graduate students or research mathematicians, as well as computer scientists who are working in automata theory and formal language theory. With its organization around unified themes, it would also be appropriate as a supplemental text for graduate level courses.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Combinatorics on Words, WORDS 2015, held in Kiel, Germany, in September 2015 under the auspices of the EATCS. The 14 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 22 submissions. The main object in the contributions are words, finite or infinite sequences of symbols over a finite alphabet. The papers reflect both theoretical contributions related to combinatorial, algebraic, and algorithmic aspects of words, as well as to contributions presenting applications of the theory of words in other field of computer science, linguistics, biology, bioinformatics, or physics.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Developments in Language Theory, DLT 2013, held in Marne-la-Vallée, France, in June 2013. The 34 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 63 submissions. The scope of the conference includes, among others, the following topics and areas: combinatorial and algebraic properties of words and languages; grammars, acceptors and transducers for strings, trees, graphs, arrays; algebraic theories for automata and languages; codes; efficient text algorithms; symbolic dynamics; decision problems; relationships to complexity theory and logic; picture description and analysis; polyominoes and bidimensional patterns; cryptography; concurrency; cellular automata; bio-inspired computing; and quantum computing.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Developments in Language Theory, DLT 2014, held in Ekaterinburg, Russia, in August 2014. The 22 full papers and 5 short papers presented together with 3 invited talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in topical subjects on Grammars, Acceptors and Transducers for Words, Trees and Graphs, Algebraic Theories of Automata, Algorithmic, Combinatorial and Algebraic Properties of Words and Languages, Variable Length Codes, Symbolic Dynamics, Cellular Automata, Polyominoes and Multidimensional Patterns, Decidability Questions, Image Manipulation and Compression, Efficient Text Algorithms, Relationships to Cryptography, Concurrency, Complexity Theory and Logic, Bio-Inspired Computing and Quantum Computing.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed papers of the 15th International Conference on Implementation and Application of Automata, CIAA 2010, held in Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, in August 2010. The 26 revised full papers together with 6 short papers were carefully selected from 52 submissions. The papers cover various topics such as applications of automata in computer-aided verification; natural language processing; pattern matching, data storage and retrieval; bioinformatics; algebra; graph theory; and foundational work on automata theory.

What is order that is not based on simple repetition, that is, periodicity? How must atoms be arranged in a material so that it diffracts like a quasicrystal? How can we describe aperiodically ordered systems mathematically? Originally triggered by the – later Nobel prize-winning – discovery of quasicrystals, the investigation of aperiodic order has since become a well-established and rapidly evolving field of mathematical research with close ties to a surprising variety of branches of mathematics and physics. This book offers an overview of the state of the art in the field of aperiodic order, presented in carefully selected authoritative surveys. It is intended for non-experts with a general background in mathematics, theoretical physics or computer science, and offers a highly accessible source of first-hand information for all those interested in this rich and exciting field. Topics covered include the mathematical theory of diffraction, the dynamical systems of tilings or Delone sets, their cohomology and non-commutative geometry, the Pisot substitution conjecture, aperiodic Schrödinger operators, and connections to arithmetic number theory.

The interplay between words, computability, algebra and arithmetic has now proved its relevance and fruitfulness. Indeed, the cross-fertilization between formal logic and finite automata (such as that initiated by J.R. Büchi) or between combinatorics on words and number theory has paved the way to recent dramatic developments, for example, the transcendence results for the real numbers having a "simple" binary expansion, by B. Adamczewski and Y. Bugeaud. This book is at the heart of this interplay through a unified exposition. Objects are considered with a perspective that comes both from theoretical computer science and mathematics. Theoretical computer science offers here topics such as decision problems and recognizability issues, whereas mathematics offers concepts such as discrete dynamical systems. The main goal is to give a quick access, for students and researchers in mathematics or computer science, to actual research topics at the intersection between automata and formal language theory, number theory and combinatorics on words. The second of two volumes on this subject, this book covers regular languages, numeration systems, formal methods applied to decidability issues about infinite words and sets of numbers.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language and Automata Theory and Applications, LATA 2011, held in Tarragona, Spain in May 2011. The 36 revised full papers presented together with four invited articles were carefully selected from 91 submissions. Among the topics covered are algebraic language theory, automata and logic, systems analysis, systems verifications, computational complexity, decidability, unification, graph transformations, language-based cryptography, and applications in data mining, computational learning, and pattern recognition.

Symbolic dynamics is essential in the study of dynamical systems of various types and is connected to many other fields such as stochastic processes, ergodic theory, representation of numbers, information and coding, etc. This graduate text introduces symbolic dynamics from a perspective of topological dynamical systems and presents a vast variety of important examples. After introducing symbolic and topological dynamics, the core of the book consists of discussions of various subshifts of positive entropy, of zero entropy, other non-shift minimal action on the Cantor set, and a study of the ergodic properties of these systems. The author presents recent developments such as spacing shifts, square-free shifts, density shifts, $mathcal{B}$-free shifts, Bratteli-Vershik systems, enumeration scales, amorphic complexity, and a modern and complete treatment of kneading theory. Later, he provides an overview of automata and linguistic complexity (Chomsky's hierarchy). The necessary background for the book varies, but for most of it a solid knowledge of real analysis and linear algebra and first courses in probability and measure theory, metric spaces, number theory, topology, and set theory suffice. Most of the exercises have solutions in the back of the book.