Source: wikibot/critical-exponent-of-a-word

= Critical exponent of a word
{wiki=Critical_exponent_of_a_word}

In the context of formal languages and automata theory, the term "critical exponent" of a word refers to a specific property related to the repetitions of substrings within that word. More formally, for a finite word \\( w \\), the critical exponent \\( e(w) \\) is defined as the smallest integer \\( n \\) such that the word can be represented as the concatenation of \\( n \\) or more identical blocks. For example, consider the word \\( w = aabb \\).