Geodesic rewriting systems and pregroups

In this paper we study rewriting systems for groups and monoids, focusing on situations where finite convergent systems may be difficult to find or do not exist. We consider systems which have no length increasing rules and are confluent and then systems in which the length reducing rules lead to geodesics. Combining these properties we arrive at our main object of study which we call geodesically perfect rewriting systems. We show that these are well-behaved and convenient to use, and give several examples of classes of groups for which they can be constructed from natural presentations. We describe a Knuth-Bendix completion process to construct such systems, show how they may be found with the help of Stallings' pregroups and conversely may be used to construct such pregroups.Comment: 44 pages, to appear in "Combinatorial and Geometric Group Theory, Dortmund and Carleton Conferences". Series: Trends in Mathematics. Bogopolski, O.; Bumagin, I.; Kharlampovich, O.; Ventura, E. (Eds.) 2009, Approx. 350 p., Hardcover. ISBN: 978-3-7643-9910-8 Birkhause

Topological Types Of P-Hyperelliptic Real Algebraic-Curves

Given a natural number p, a projective irreducible smooth algebraic curve V defined over R is called p-hyperelliptic if there exists a birational isomorphism of V, of order 2, such that V/ has genus p. This work is concerned with the existence of such curves according to their genus g and the number k of connected components of V(R). We prove that Harnack’s condition 1 k g is sufficient if V \ V (R) is connected. In case V \ V (R) non-connected, the following conditions 1 k g + 1 (g + k 1(2)), and either k = g + 1 − 2q for some q, 0 q p, or k 2p + 2 with = 1 for even p, = 2 for odd p, are necessary and sufficient for the existence of the curve