Satisfaction of existential theories in finitely presented groups and some embedding theorems. (Q2503408)

A group \(G\) is called SQ-universal if every countable group is embeddable in a quotient of \(G\). The main result of the paper under review is the following theorem: For every recursively enumerable existential theory \(\Gamma\) (in the language of group theory with multiplication, inverse, and neutral element), there exists a finitely presented SQ-universal group \(H\) such that \(\Gamma\) is satisfied in every nontrivial quotient of \(H\). Furthermore, if \(\Gamma\) is satisfied in some group with soluble word problem, then \(H\) can be taken with soluble word problem. The following theorem gives a new characterization of finitely generated groups with soluble word problem: A finitely generated group \(G\) has soluble word problem iff there exists a finitely presented group \(H\) such that \(G\) is embeddable in every nontrivial quotient of \(H\). The following strong version of a classical theorem of Higman, Neumann and Neumann is proved: For every countable group \(G\), there exists a 2-generated SQ-universal group \(H\) such that \(G\) is embeddable in every nontrivial quotient of \(H\).