Deleting Powers in Words

Abstract

We consider the language consisting of all words such that it is possible to obtain the empty word by iteratively deleting powers. It turns out that in the case of deleting squares in binary words this language is regular, and in the case of deleting squares in words over a larger alphabet the language is not regular. However, for deleting squares over any alphabet we find that this language can be generated by a linear index grammar which is a mildly context sensitive grammar formalism. In the general case we show that this language is generated by an indexed grammar.