Inverse monoids and immersions of 2-complexes

It is well known that under mild conditions on a connected topological space $\mathcal X$, connected covers of $\mathcal X$ may be classified via conjugacy classes of subgroups of the fundamental group of $\mathcal X$. In this paper, we extend these results to the study of immersions into 2-dimensional CW-complexes. An immersion $f : {\mathcal D} \rightarrow \mathcal C$ between CW-complexes is a cellular map such that each point $y \in {\mathcal D}$ has a neighborhood $U$ that is mapped homeomorphically onto $f(U)$ by $f$. In order to classify immersions into a 2-dimensional CW-complex $\mathcal C$, we need to replace the fundamental group of $\mathcal C$ by an appropriate inverse monoid. We show how conjugacy classes of the closed inverse submonoids of this inverse monoid may be used to classify connected immersions into the complex

On periodic points of free inverse monoid endomorphisms

It is proved that the periodic point submonoid of a free inverse monoid endomorphism is always finitely generated. Using Chomsky's hierarchy of languages, we prove that the fixed point submonoid of an endomorphism of a free inverse monoid can be represented by a context-sensitive language but, in general, it cannot be represented by a context-free language.Comment: 18 page

Ramification theory for varieties over a local field

We define generalizations of classical invariants of wild ramification for coverings on a variety of arbitrary dimension over a local field. For an l-adic sheaf, we define its Swan class as a 0-cycle class supported on the wild ramification locus. We prove a formula of Riemann-Roch type for the Swan conductor of cohomology together with its relative version, assuming that the local field is of mixed characteristic. We also prove the integrality of the Swan class for curves over a local field as a generalization of the Hasse-Arf theorem. We derive a proof of a conjecture of Serre on the Artin character for a group action with an isolated fixed point on a regular local ring, assuming the dimension is 2.Comment: 159 pages, some corrections are mad

On the rational subset problem for groups

We use language theory to study the rational subset problem for groups and monoids. We show that the decidability of this problem is preserved under graph of groups constructions with finite edge groups. In particular, it passes through free products amalgamated over finite subgroups and HNN extensions with finite associated subgroups. We provide a simple proof of a result of Grunschlag showing that the decidability of this problem is a virtual property. We prove further that the problem is decidable for a direct product of a group G with a monoid M if and only if membership is uniformly decidable for G-automata subsets of M. It follows that a direct product of a free group with any abelian group or commutative monoid has decidable rational subset membership.Comment: 19 page

Generalizations of the Muller-Schupp theorem and tree-like inverse graphs

We extend the characterization of context-free groups of Muller and Schupp in two ways. We first show that for a quasi-transitive inverse graph $\Gamma$, being quasi-isometric to a tree, or context-free (finitely many end-cones types), or having the automorphism group $Aut(\Gamma)$ that is virtually free, are all equivalent conditions. Furthermore, we add to the previous equivalences a group theoretic analog to the representation theorem of Chomsky-Sch\"utzenberger that is fundamental in solving a weaker version of a conjecture of T. Brough which also extends Muller and Schupp' result to the class of groups that are virtually finitely generated subgroups of direct product of free groups. We show that such groups are precisely those whose word problem is the intersection of a finite number of languages accepted by quasi-transitive, tree-like inverse graphs

On an algorithm to decide whether a free group is a free factor of another

We revisit the problem of deciding whether a finitely generated subgroup H is a free factor of a given free group F. Known algorithms solve this problem in time polynomial in the sum of the lengths of the generators of H and exponential in the rank of F. We show that the latter dependency can be made exponential in the rank difference rank(F) - rank(H), which often makes a significant change.Comment: 20 page

Algorithmic properties of inverse monoids with hyperbolic and tree-like Sch\"utzenberger graphs

We prove that the class of finitely presented inverse monoids whose Sch\"utzenberger graphs are quasi-isometric to trees has a uniformly solvable word problem, furthermore, the languages of their Sch\"utzenberger automata are context-free. On the other hand, we show that there is a finitely presented inverse monoid with hyperbolic Sch\"utzenberger graphs and an unsolvable word problem