Verifying nilpotence (Q580975)

This paper describes a new procedure, based on string rewriting rules, for verifying that a finitely presented group G is nilpotent. If G is not nilpotent, the procedure may not terminate. A preliminary computer implementation of the procedure has been used to prove a theorem about minimal presentations of free nilpotent groups of class 3. Finally, it is shown that the ideas presented here may be combined with work of \textit{G. Baumslag}, \textit{F. B. Cannonito}, and \textit{C. F. Miller III} [Math. Z. 178, 289-295 (1981; Zbl 0455.20027)] to prove that the polycyclicity of a finitely presented group can be verified.