Internal Shortest Absent Word Queries

Given a string T of length n over an alphabet Σ ⊂ {1,2,…,n^{𝒪(1)}} of size σ, we are to preprocess T so that given a range [i,j], we can return a representation of a shortest string over Σ that is absent in the fragment T[i]⋯ T[j] of T. For any positive integer k ∈ [1,log log_σ n], we present an 𝒪((n/k)⋅ log log_σ n)-size data structure, which can be constructed in 𝒪(nlog_σ n) time, and answers queries in time 𝒪(log log_σ k).