New optima for the deletion shadow

TL;DR

This paper determines the minimal deletion shadow size for various family sizes of words over an alphabet, extending known results beyond binary cases using fractional techniques.

Contribution

It introduces new minimal shadow characterizations for intermediate family sizes over larger alphabets, generalizing prior binary results.

Findings

Identifies minimal deletion shadows for families of intermediate sizes

Shows families with limited symbol repetitions are optimal

Uses fractional techniques for the proof

Abstract

For a family $\mathcal{F}$ of words of length $n$ drawn from an alphabet $A=[r]=\{1,\dots,r\}$, Danh and Daykin defined the deletion shadow $\Delta \mathcal{F}$ as the family containing all words that can be made by deleting one letter of a word of $\mathcal{F}$. They asked, given the size of such a family, how small its deletion shadow can be, and answered this with a Kruskal-Katona type result when the alphabet has size $2$. However, Leck showed that no ordering can give such a result for larger alphabets. The minimal shadow has been known for families of size $s^n$, where the optimal family has form $[s]^n$. We give the minimal shadow for many intermediate sizes between these levels, showing that families of the form 'all words in $[s]^n$ in which the symbol $s$ appears at most $k$ times' are optimal. Our proof uses some fractional techniques that may be of independent interest.