Structure of words with short 2-length in a free product of groups (Q1628506)

Let \(F=F(X)\) be a free group and let \(R \in F\) be a cyclically reduced word which is not a proper power and has length at least two. \textit{C. M. Weinbaum} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 109, No. 3, 615--619 (1990; Zbl 0708.20008)] showed that some cyclic conjugate of \(R\) has a decomposition of the form \(UV\), where \(U\) and \(V\) are non-empty cyclic subwords of \(R\), each of which is uniquely positioned in \(R\) i.e. occurs exactly once as a cyclic subword of \(R\). \textit{A. J. Duncan} and \textit{J. Howie} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 115, No. 4, 947--954 (1992; Zbl 0790.20052)] then extended the above result to any word \(R\) in a free product \(G_{1} * G_{2}\) such that \(R\) has no letter of order two. Let \(R\) be a cyclically reduced word in \(G_{1} * G_{2}\), which is not a proper power and has length at least two. For each letter \(a\) of order \(2\) involved in \(R\), let \(D(a)\) denote the number of times it occurs in \(R\). Let \(\mathbf{S}_{R}\) be the symmetrized closure of \(R\) in \(G_{1} * G_{2}\) (i.e. the smallest subset of \(G_{1}*G_{2}\) containing \(R\) which is closed under cyclic permutations and inversion). Since \(D(a)\) is unchanged by replacing \(R\) with any other element in \(\mathbf{S}_{R}\), the author defines \(D(\mathbf{S}_{R})\), the \textit{2-length} of \(\mathbf{S}_{R}\), as the maximum \(D(a)\), such that \(a\) is a letter of order 2 involved in \(R\). The main result of this paper is: Theorem 1. Let \(R \in G_{1} * G_{2}\) be a word of length at least 2 and which is not a proper power. Suppose that \(D(\mathbf{S}_{R}) \leq 2\). Then either a cyclic conjugate of \(R\) has a decomposition of the form \(UV\) such that \(U\) and \(V\) are uniquely positioned or a cyclic conjugate of \(R\) has the form \(aXbX^{-1}\), for some word \(X\) and some letters \(a\), \(b\) with \(a^{2}=1\). The word \(R\) is exceptional if a cyclic conjugate of \(R\) has the form \(aXbX^{-1}\) with \(a^{2}=1=b^{2}\) and non-exceptional otherwise. A consequence of Theorem 1 is: Theorem 2: Let \(R \in G_{1} * G_{2}\) be a non-exceptional cyclically reduced word such that \(D(\mathbf{S}_{R}) \leq 2\). Then a non-trivial reduced picture on \(D^{2}\) over \((G_{1}*G_{2})/N(R^{m})\) with \(m \geq 3\) satisfies the small cancellation condition \(C(6)\).