Formal language theory and the geometry of 3-manifolds
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Formal language theory and the geometry of 3-manifolds
zbMATH Open document ID: 0873.20026
DOI: 10.1007/BF02566435
author: Martin R. Bridson
author: Robert H. Gilman
published in: Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici
publication date: 1997-09-03T00:00:00Z
full work available at URL: https://eudml.org/doc/140412
review text: As explained by the authors, ``in the last several years there has been a remarkable interplay between topology, geometry, group theory, and the theory of formal languages. Thurston's work on the classification problem has shown that the topology of 3-dimensional manifolds is inextricably linked with the study of rigid geometries; in a series of essays Gromov introduced powerful geometric techniques into combinatorial group theory; and the work of Epstein et al., and earlier that of Muller and Schupp showed that the geometry of the Cayley graph of a group is intimately connected with the properties of associated formal languages. In this article we focus on a point of intersection of these three bodies of knowledge: normal forms for 3-manifold groups. We shall give upper and lower bounds on the logical complexity of the languages associated to geometrically efficient normal forms for elements in the fundamental group of any compact 3-manifold that satisfies Thurston's geometrization conjecture.'' The formal languages arise as combings of the fundamental groups of 3-manifolds. A choice of generators for a finitely generated group \(G\) may be regarded as a surjective monoid homomorphism \(\mu\colon\Sigma^*\to G\) where \(\Sigma^*\) is the free monoid on the finite alphabet \(\Sigma\). The words in \(\Sigma^*\) are thought of as paths beginning at the identity in the Cayley graph of \(G\) (with respect to the generating set \(\Sigma\)). A combing for \(G\) is just a selection of one such path from the identity to \(g\) for each \(g\in G\). Ideally one would like to construct combings which have a simple description as a formal language (i.e. a subset of \(\Sigma^*\)) and are efficient in the sense that routes to nearby points are uniformly close. The latter property can be made precise in various ways. The combing is said to have the fellow-traveler property if there is a uniform \(k\) such that travelers starting from the identity and moving at unit speed along the p…
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 20F65
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 57M07
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 68Q45
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 20F05
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 20F34
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 20F10
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 20M35
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 57M50
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 57M05
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 20F18
zbMATH DE Number: 1008568
zbMATH Keywords: fundamental groups of compact 3-manifolds
zbMATH Keywords: 3-orbifolds
zbMATH Keywords: formal languages
zbMATH Keywords: context-free languages
zbMATH Keywords: bounded languages
zbMATH Keywords: regular languages
zbMATH Keywords: Thurston geometrization conjecture
zbMATH Keywords: combings
zbMATH Keywords: indexed languages
zbMATH Keywords: normal forms for 3-manifold groups
zbMATH Keywords: finitely generated groups
zbMATH Keywords: Cayley graphs
zbMATH Keywords: asynchronous fellow traveller property
zbMATH Keywords: asynchronously automatic groups
reviewed by: Darryl McCullough
MaRDI profile type: MaRDI publication profile
OpenAlex ID: W2059867050
Recommended article: Sol geometry groups are not asynchronously automatic
Recommended article: Combings of semidirect products and 3-manifold groups
Recommended article: Combings of groups and the grammar of reparameterization.
Recommended article: On the definition of word hyperbolic groups.
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1008568