123 research outputs found
Zappa-Sz\'ep products of Garside monoids
A monoid is the internal Zappa-Sz\'ep product of two submonoids, if every
element of admits a unique factorisation as the product of one element of
each of the submonoids in a given order. This definition yields actions of the
submonoids on each other, which we show to be structure preserving.
We prove that is a Garside monoid if and only if both of the submonoids
are Garside monoids. In this case, these factors are parabolic submonoids of
and the Garside structure of can be described in terms of the Garside
structures of the factors. We give explicit isomorphisms between the lattice
structures of and the product of the lattice structures on the factors that
respect the Garside normal forms. In particular, we obtain explicit natural
bijections between the normal form language of and the product of the
normal form languages of its factors.Comment: Published versio
On the cycling operation in braid groups
The cycling operation is a special kind of conjugation that can be applied to
elements in Artin's braid groups, in order to reduce their length. It is a key
ingredient of the usual solutions to the conjugacy problem in braid groups. In
their seminal paper on braid-cryptography, Ko, Lee et al. proposed the {\it
cycling problem} as a hard problem in braid groups that could be interesting
for cryptography. In this paper we give a polynomial solution to that problem,
mainly by showing that cycling is surjective, and using a result by Maffre
which shows that pre-images under cycling can be computed fast. This result
also holds in every Artin-Tits group of spherical type.
On the other hand, the conjugacy search problem in braid groups is usually
solved by computing some finite sets called (left) ultra summit sets
(left-USS), using left normal forms of braids. But one can equally use right
normal forms and compute right-USS's. Hard instances of the conjugacy search
problem correspond to elements having big (left and right) USS's. One may think
that even if some element has a big left-USS, it could possibly have a small
right-USS. We show that this is not the case in the important particular case
of rigid braids. More precisely, we show that the left-USS and the right-USS of
a given rigid braid determine isomorphic graphs, with the arrows reversed, the
isomorphism being defined using iterated cycling. We conjecture that the same
is true for every element, not necessarily rigid, in braid groups and
Artin-Tits groups of spherical type.Comment: 20 page
Conjugacy in Garside Groups III: Periodic braids
An element in Artin's braid group B_n is said to be periodic if some power of
it lies in the center of B_n. In this paper we prove that all previously known
algorithms for solving the conjugacy search problem in B_n are exponential in
the braid index n for the special case of periodic braids. We overcome this
difficulty by putting to work several known isomorphisms between Garside
structures in the braid group B_n and other Garside groups. This allows us to
obtain a polynomial solution to the original problem in the spirit of the
previously known algorithms.
This paper is the third in a series of papers by the same authors about the
conjugacy problem in Garside groups. They have a unified goal: the development
of a polynomial algorithm for the conjugacy decision and search problems in
B_n, which generalizes to other Garside groups whenever possible. It is our
hope that the methods introduced here will allow the generalization of the
results in this paper to all Artin-Tits groups of spherical type.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figures. Classical references implying Corollaries 12
and 15 have been added. To appear in Journal of Algebr
Conjugacy in Garside groups I: Cyclings, powers, and rigidity
In this paper a relation between iterated cyclings and iterated powers of
elements in a Garside group is shown. This yields a characterization of
elements in a Garside group having a rigid power, where 'rigid' means that the
left normal form changes only in the obvious way under cycling and decycling.
It is also shown that, given X in a Garside group, if some power X^m is
conjugate to a rigid element, then m can be bounded above by ||\Delta||^3. In
the particular case of braid groups, this implies that a pseudo-Anosov braid
has a small power whose ultra summit set consists of rigid elements. This
solves one of the problems in the way of a polynomial solution to the conjugacy
decision problem (CDP) and the conjugacy search problem (CSP) in braid groups.
In addition to proving the rigidity theorem, it will be shown how this paper
fits into the authors' program for finding a polynomial algorithm to the
CDP/CSP, and what remains to be done.Comment: 41 page
Group-theoretic models of the inversion process in bacterial genomes
The variation in genome arrangements among bacterial taxa is largely due to
the process of inversion. Recent studies indicate that not all inversions are
equally probable, suggesting, for instance, that shorter inversions are more
frequent than longer, and those that move the terminus of replication are less
probable than those that do not. Current methods for establishing the inversion
distance between two bacterial genomes are unable to incorporate such
information. In this paper we suggest a group-theoretic framework that in
principle can take these constraints into account. In particular, we show that
by lifting the problem from circular permutations to the affine symmetric
group, the inversion distance can be found in polynomial time for a model in
which inversions are restricted to acting on two regions. This requires the
proof of new results in group theory, and suggests a vein of new combinatorial
problems concerning permutation groups on which group theorists will be needed
to collaborate with biologists. We apply the new method to inferring distances
and phylogenies for published Yersinia pestis data.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures, in Press, Journal of Mathematical Biolog
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