Characteristic Sturmian word Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
For an irrational number , the characteristic Sturmian word of slope is the binary sequence
Each term is zero or one because the arguments differ by less than one. This fixes an intercept convention: it is the lower mechanical word with intercept .
For , the beginning is , the Fibonacci word. Like every Sturmian word, it has exactly distinct factors of length . Its relation to continued fractions makes its recursive block structure reflect the partial quotients of its slope.