Characteristic Sturmian words are extremal for the Critical Factorization Theorem

We prove that characteristic Sturmian words are extremal for the Critical Factorization Theorem (CFT) in the following sense. If p x ( n ) denotes the local period of an infinite word x at point n , we prove that x is a characteristic Sturmian word if and only if p x ( n ) is smaller than or equal to n + 1 for all n ≥ 1 and it is equal to n + 1 for infinitely many integers n . This result is extremal with respect to the \{CFT\} since a consequence of the \{CFT\} is that, for any infinite recurrent word x, either the function p x is bounded, and in such a case x is periodic, or p x ( n ) ≥ n + 1 for infinitely many integers n . As a byproduct of the techniques used in the paper we extend a result of Harju and Nowotka (2002) in [18] stating that any finite Fibonacci word f n , n ≥ 5 , has only one critical point. Indeed we determine the exact number of critical points in any finite standard Sturmian word.