Parallel poly-pushdown groups (Q1304880)

The authors introduce the class of parallel poly-pushdown groups, which they denote by \(\mathcal P\), whose definition is based on the notion of computations being done in parallel by several pushdown automata. This gives rise to a new class of languages, which they call parallel poly-pushdown languages. The class \(\mathcal P\) generalizes the class of automatic groups, and it has a number of properties in common with that class. For instance, \(\mathcal P\) is closed under free products and under direct products. The class \(\mathcal P\) includes the fundamental groups of all 3-manifolds which satisfy Thurston's geometrization conjecture. Every finitely generated nilpotent group of class at most two is in \(\mathcal P\). For every positive integer \(n\), the group of all integral upper uni-triangular matrices of degree \(n\) is in \(\mathcal P\). Groups in \(\mathcal P\) have solvable word problems. The class \(\mathcal P\) is also closed under wreath products, and so contains many groups which are not finitely presented.