Infinite labeled trees: From rational to Sturmian trees

Abstract

This paper studies infinite unordered d -ary trees with nodes labeled by { 0 , 1 } . We introduce the notions of rational and Sturmian trees along with the definitions of (strongly) balanced trees and mechanical trees, and study the relations among them. In particular, we show that (strongly) balanced trees exist and coincide with mechanical trees in the irrational case, providing an effective construction. Such trees also have a minimal factor complexity, hence are Sturmian. We also give several examples illustrating the inclusion relations between these classes of trees.