34 research outputs found
Ash's type II theorem, profinite topology and Malcev products
This paper is concerned with the many deep and far reaching consequences of Ash's positive solution of the type II conjecture for finite monoids. After rewieving the statement and history of the problem, we show how it can be used to decide if a finite monoid is in the variety generated by the Malcev product of a given variety and the variety of groups. Many interesting varieties of finite monoids have such a description including the variety generated by inverse monoids, orthodox monoids and solid monoids. A fascinating case is that of block groups. A block group is a monoid such that every element has at most one semigroup inverse. As a consequence of the cover conjecture - also verified by Ash - it follows that block groups are precisely the divisors of power monoids of finite groups. The proof of this last fact uses earlier results of the authors and the deepest tools and results from global semigroup theory. We next give connections with the profinite group topologies on finitely generated free monoids and free groups. In particular, we show that the type II conjecture is equivalent with two other conjectures on the structure of closed sets (one conjecture for the free monoid and another one for the free group). Now Ash's theorem implies that the two topological conjectures are true and independently, a direct proof of the topological conjecture for the free group has been recently obtained by Ribes and Zalesskii. An important consequence is that a rational subset of a finitely generated free group G is closed in the profinite topology if and only if it is a finite union of sets of the form gH1H2... Hn, where each Hi is a finitely generated subgroup of G. This significantly extends classical results by M. Hall. Finally we return to the roots of this problem and give connections with the complexity theory of finite semigroups. We show that the largest local complexity function in the sense of Rhodes and Tilson is computable
Church-Rosser Systems, Codes with Bounded Synchronization Delay and Local Rees Extensions
What is the common link, if there is any, between Church-Rosser systems,
prefix codes with bounded synchronization delay, and local Rees extensions? The
first obvious answer is that each of these notions relates to topics of
interest for WORDS: Church-Rosser systems are certain rewriting systems over
words, codes are given by sets of words which form a basis of a free submonoid
in the free monoid of all words (over a given alphabet) and local Rees
extensions provide structural insight into regular languages over words. So, it
seems to be a legitimate title for an extended abstract presented at the
conference WORDS 2017. However, this work is more ambitious, it outlines some
less obvious but much more interesting link between these topics. This link is
based on a structure theory of finite monoids with varieties of groups and the
concept of local divisors playing a prominent role. Parts of this work appeared
in a similar form in conference proceedings where proofs and further material
can be found.Comment: Extended abstract of an invited talk given at WORDS 201
Rational cross-sections, bounded generation and orders on groups
We provide new examples of groups without rational cross-sections (also
called regular normal forms), using connections with bounded generation and
rational orders on groups. Specifically, our examples are extensions of
infinite torsion groups, groups of Grigorchuk type, wreath products similar to
and , a group of permutations of
, and a finitely presented HNN extension of the first Grigorchuk
group. This last group is the first example of finitely presented group with
solvable word problem and without rational cross-sections. It is also not
autostackable, and has no left-regular complete rewriting system.Comment: Comments are welcome! 38 pages, 23 figure
Profinite Groups Associated to Sofic Shifts are Free
We show that the maximal subgroup of the free profinite semigroup associated
by Almeida to an irreducible sofic shift is a free profinite group,
generalizing an earlier result of the second author for the case of the full
shift (whose corresponding maximal subgroup is the maximal subgroup of the
minimal ideal). A corresponding result is proved for certain relatively free
profinite semigroups. We also establish some other analogies between the kernel
of the free profinite semigroup and the \J-class associated to an irreducible
sofic shift
Knapsack Problems for Wreath Products
In recent years, knapsack problems for (in general non-commutative) groups have attracted attention. In this paper, the knapsack problem for wreath products is studied. It turns out that decidability of knapsack is not preserved under wreath product. On the other hand, the class of knapsack-semilinear groups, where solutions sets of knapsack equations are effectively semilinear, is closed under wreath product. As a consequence, we obtain the decidability of knapsack for free solvable groups. Finally, it is shown that for every non-trivial abelian group G, knapsack (as well as the related subset sum problem)
for the wreath product G wr Z is NP-complete