Some extremal properties of the Fibonacci word

Abstract

We prove that the Fibonacci word $f$ satisfies among all characteristic Sturmian words, three interesting extremal properties. The first concerns the length and the second the minimal period of its palindromic prefixes. Each of these two properties characterizes $f$ up to a renaming of its letters. A third property concerns the number of occurrences of the letter $b$ in its palindromic prefixes. It characterizes uniquely $f$ among all characteristic Sturmian words having the prefix $abaa$.