Generalized De Bruijn Words, Invertible Necklaces, and the Burrows-Wheeler Transform

Abstract

We define generalized de Bruijn words as those words having a Burrows-Wheeler transform that is a concatenation of permutations of the alphabet. We show that generalized de Bruijn words are in 1-to-1 correspondence with Hamiltonian cycles in the generalized de Bruijn graphs introduced in the early '80s in the context of network design. When the size of the alphabet is a prime $p$, we define invertible necklaces as those whose BWT-matrix is non-singular. We show that invertible necklaces of length $n$ correspond to normal bases of the finite field $F_{p^n}$, and that they form an Abelian group isomorphic to the Reutenauer group $RG_p^n$. Using known results in abstract algebra, we can make a bridge between generalized de Bruijn words and invertible necklaces. In particular, we highlight a correspondence between binary de Bruijn words of order $d+1$, binary necklaces of length $2^{d}$ having an odd number of $1$'s, invertible BWT matrices of size $2^{d}\times 2^{d}$, and normal bases of the finite field $F_{2^{2^{d}}}$.