Multidimensional extension of the Morse–Hedlund theorem

Abstract

A celebrated result of Morse and Hedlund, stated in 1938, asserts that a sequence x over a finite alphabet is ultimately periodic if and only if, for some n, the number of different factors of length n appearing in x is less than n+1. Attempts to extend this fundamental result, for example, to higher dimensions, have been considered during the last fifteen years. Let d≥2. A legitimate extension to a multidimensional setting of the notion of periodicity is to consider sets of Zd definable by a first order formula in the Presburger arithmetic 〈Z;<,+〉. With this latter notion and using a powerful criterion due to Muchnik, we exhibit a complete extension of the Morse–Hedlund theorem to an arbitrary dimension d and characterize sets of Zd definable in 〈Z;<,+〉 in terms of some functions counting recurrent blocks, that is, blocks occurring infinitely often.