Spectrum, algebraicity and normalization in alternate bases

Abstract

The first aim of this article is to give information about the algebraic properties of alternate bases $\boldsymbol{\beta}=(\beta_0,\dots,\beta_{p-1})$ determining sofic systems. We show that a necessary condition is that the product $\delta=\prod_{i=0}^{p-1}\beta_i$ is an algebraic integer and all of the bases $\beta_0,\ldots,\beta_{p-1}$ belong to the algebraic field ${\mathbb Q}(\delta)$. On the other hand, we also give a sufficient condition: if $\delta$ is a Pisot number and $\beta_0,\ldots,\beta_{p-1}\in {\mathbb Q}(\delta)$, then the system associated with the alternate base $\boldsymbol{\beta}=(\beta_0,\dots,\beta_{p-1})$ is sofic. The second aim of this paper is to provide an analogy of Frougny's result concerning normalization of real bases representations. We show that given an alternate base $\boldsymbol{\beta}=(\beta_0,\dots,\beta_{p-1})$ such that $\delta$ is a Pisot number and $\beta_0,\ldots,\beta_{p-1}\in {\mathbb Q}(\delta)$, the normalization function is computable by a finite B\"uchi automaton, and furthermore, we effectively construct such an automaton. An important tool in our study is the spectrum of numeration systems associated with alternate bases. The spectrum of a real number $\delta>1$ and an alphabet $A\subset {\mathbb Z}$ was introduced by Erd\H{o}s et al. For our purposes, we use a generalized concept with $\delta\in{\mathbb C}$ and $A\subset{\mathbb C}$ and study its topological properties.