The degree of commutativity and lamplighter groups

The degree of commutativity of a group $G$ measures the probability of choosing two elements in $G$ which commute. There are many results studying this for finite groups. In [AMV17], this was generalised to infinite groups. In this note, we compute the degree of commutativity for wreath products of the form $\mathbb{Z}\wr \mathbb{Z}$ and $F\wr \mathbb{Z}$ where $F$ is any finite group.Comment: 9 pages, accepted, International Journal of Algebra and Computation (IJAC

The Structure of Residuated Lattices

A residuated lattice is an ordered algebraic structure [formula] such that is a lattice, is a monoid, and \ and / are binary operations for which the equivalences [formula] hold for all a,b,c ∈ L. It is helpful to think of the last two operations as left and right division and thus the equivalences can be seen as dividing on the right by b and dividing on the left by a. The class of all residuated lattices is denoted by ℛℒ The study of such objects originated in the context of the theory of ring ideals in the 1930s. The collection of all two-sided ideals of a ring forms a lattice upon which one can impose a natural monoid structure making this object into a residuated lattice. Such ideas were investigated by Morgan Ward and R. P. Dilworth in a series of important papers [15, 16, 45–48] and also by Krull in [33]. Since that time, there has been substantial research regarding some specific classes of residuated structures, see for example [1, 9, 26] and [38], but we believe that this is the first time that a general structural theory has been established for the class ℛℒ as a whole. In particular, we develop the notion of a normal subalgebra and show that ℛℒ is an ideal variety in the sense that it is an equational class in which congruences correspond to normal subalgebras in the same way that ring congruences correspond to ring ideals. As an application of the general theory, we produce an equational basis for the important subvariety ℛℒ[sup C] that is generated by all residuated chains. In the process, we find that this subclass has some remarkable structural properties that we believe could lead to some important decomposition theorems for its finite members (along the lines of the decompositions provided in [27]

Definable sets in a hyperbolic group

We give a description of definable sets $P=(p_1,..., p_m)$ in a free non-abelian group $F$ and in a torsion-free non-elementary hyperbolic group $G$ that follows from our work on the Tarski problems. This answers Malcev's question for $F$. As a corollary we show that proper non-cyclic subgroups of $F$ and $G$ are not definable and prove Bestvina and Feighn's result that definable subsets $P=(p)$ in a free group are either negligible or co-negligible in their terminology.Comment: Corollary of Theorem 3 was corrected and incorporated into Theorem

The Maximal Subgroups and the Complexity of the Flow Semigroup of Finite (Di)graphs

Preprint of an article first published online in International Journal of Algebra and Computation, September 2017, doi: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218196717500412. © 2017 Copyright World Scientific Publishing Company. http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscinet/ijac. Accepted Manuscript version is under embargo. Embargo end date: 26 September 2018.The flow semigroup, introduced by John Rhodes, is an invariant for digraphs and a complete invariant for graphs. We refine and prove Rhodes's conjecture on the structure of the maximal groups in the flow semigroup for finite, antisymmetric, strongly connected graphs. Building on this result, we investigate and fully describe the structure and actions of the maximal subgroups of the flow semigroup acting on all but k points for all finite digraphs and graphs for all k >=1. A linear algorithm is presented to determine these so-called 'defect k groups' for any finite (di)graph. Finally, we prove that the complexity of the flow semigroup of a 2-vertex connected (and strongly connected di)graph with n vertices is n- 2, completely confirming Rhodes's conjecture for such (di)graphs.Peer reviewe

Conjugacy in Baumslag's group, generic case complexity, and division in power circuits

The conjugacy problem belongs to algorithmic group theory. It is the following question: given two words x, y over generators of a fixed group G, decide whether x and y are conjugated, i.e., whether there exists some z such that zxz^{-1} = y in G. The conjugacy problem is more difficult than the word problem, in general. We investigate the complexity of the conjugacy problem for two prominent groups: the Baumslag-Solitar group BS(1,2) and the Baumslag(-Gersten) group G(1,2). The conjugacy problem in BS(1,2) is TC^0-complete. To the best of our knowledge BS(1,2) is the first natural infinite non-commutative group where such a precise and low complexity is shown. The Baumslag group G(1,2) is an HNN-extension of BS(1,2). We show that the conjugacy problem is decidable (which has been known before); but our results go far beyond decidability. In particular, we are able to show that conjugacy in G(1,2) can be solved in polynomial time in a strongly generic setting. This means that essentially for all inputs conjugacy in G(1,2) can be decided efficiently. In contrast, we show that under a plausible assumption the average case complexity of the same problem is non-elementary. Moreover, we provide a lower bound for the conjugacy problem in G(1,2) by reducing the division problem in power circuits to the conjugacy problem in G(1,2). The complexity of the division problem in power circuits is an open and interesting problem in integer arithmetic.Comment: Section 5 added: We show that an HNN extension G = < H, b | bab^-1 = {\phi}(a), a \in A > has a non-amenable Schreier graph with respect to the base group H if and only if A \neq H \neq