On the difficulty of presenting finitely presentable groups. (Q664234)

The authors exhibit classes of groups in which the word problem is uniformly solvable but in which there is no algorithm which computes finite presentations of finitely presentable subgroups. It includes in particular direct products of hyperbolic groups, CAT(0) groups, groups of integer matrices, right-angled Coxeter groups, and right-angled Artin groups. They discuss related classes of groups in which there actually exists an algorithm which computes finite presentations of finitely presentable subgroups. They also build a finitely presented group which has a polynomial Dehn function but in which there is no algorithm which computes the first Betti number of its finitely presentable subgroups. The paper concludes with a list of related questions.