The regular-word existence and uniqueness conjecture for generalized Thue–Morse sequences

Let r2r\geqslant 2 and let nn be the length of a word over a two-letter alphabet. An rr-regular word is a word satisfying the corresponding regularity condition, and PTE(2r+1,2,r)\operatorname{PTE}(2^{r+1},2,r) denotes the set of words representing Prouhet–Tarry–Escott solutions with these parameters. Regular-word existence and uniqueness conjecture. On a two-letter alphabet, there are rr-regular words of length nn if and only if

n=k2r,k2.n=k\cdot 2^r,\qquad k\geqslant 2.

Moreover, PTE(2r+1,2,r)\operatorname{PTE}(2^{r+1},2,r) contains just one word: the initial segment of the Thue–Morse sequence of length 2r+12^{r+1}. The preceding theorem establishes existence whenever n=k2rn=k\cdot 2^r with k2k\geqslant 2; the conjectural content is the converse for all r2r\geqslant 2 and the asserted uniqueness of the corresponding Prouhet–Tarry–Escott word.

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Primary source

Ethan D. Bolker, Carl Offner, Robert Richman and Catalin Zara, “The Prouhet-Tarry-Escott Problem and Generalized Thue-Morse Sequences”, arXiv:1304.6756 (2013).

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