Square-free words as products of commutators. (Q838395)

Elements of the derived subgroup \(F'\) of a free group \(F\) can be presented as values of canonical forms, called `Wicks forms'. The genus of a word \(w\in F'\) is the least positive number \(g\) such that \(w\) is a product of \(g\) commutators in \(F\), (in other words, \(g\) is the commutator width of \(w\) in \(F\)). Every element of genus \(g\) in \(F'\) can be presented by non-cancelling substitution in a Wicks form of genus \(g\). In genus \(g=1\) there is only one Wicks form. For \(g\geq 2\) there are finitely many Wicks forms and their number grows quite fast with \(g\). The authors answer a natural question by E. Rips by proving that there is a sequence of words \(w_2,w_3,\dots,w_n\in F_{24}\) such that \(w_g\) has genus \(g\) and the number of Wicks forms from which it can be obtained by non-cancelling substitution is bounded below by \(g!\), when \(g>10^{10}\)