A geometric characterization of automatic semigroups (Q861269)

In this very interesting paper, the authors generalize the ``fellow traveller property'' from groups to semigroups giving a geometric characterization of automatic semigroups. The fellow traveller property, a geometric property of automatic groups describing the structure of the Cayley graph of an automatic group, is extended as follows: Let \(S\) be a semigroup, \(A\) be a finite generating set for \(S\), and \(L\) be a regular language over \(A\) that maps onto \(S\). Then \((A,L)\) is an automatic structure for \(S\) if and only if \(S\) has a finite number of so-called continuation graphs with respect to \(L\).