The Post correspondence problem in groups.

DOI10.1515/JGTH-2014-0022MaRDI QIDQ471848zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors J. Herrera, Sumit K. Garg

Publication date 17 November 2014

Published in Journal of Group Theory (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.5246

zbMATH Keywords

computational complexityendomorphismsNP-completenessfree groupsnilpotent groupsArtin groupsword problemPost correspondence problemfree monoidshyperbolic groupstwisted conjugacy problemequalizers

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Analysis of algorithms and problem complexity (68Q25) Word problems, other decision problems, connections with logic and automata (group-theoretic aspects) (20F10) Nilpotent groups (20F18) Free semigroups, generators and relations, word problems (20M05) Word problems (aspects of algebraic structures) (08A50) Word problems, etc. in computability and recursion theory (03D40)

Abstract: We generalize the classical Post correspondence problem ($mathbf{PCP}_n$) and its non-homogeneous variation ($mathbf{GPCP}_n$) to non-commutative groups and study the computational complexity of these new problems. We observe that $mathbf{PCP}_n$ is closely related to the equalizer problem in groups, while $mathbf{GPCP}_n$ is connected to the double twisted conjugacy problem for endomorphisms. Furthermore, it is shown that one of the strongest forms of the word problem in a group $G$ (we call it the {em hereditary word problem}) can be reduced to $mathbf{GPCP}_n$ in $G$ in polynomial time. The main results are that $mathbf{PCP}_n$ is decidable in a finitely generated nilpotent group in polynomial time, while $mathbf{GPCP}_n$ is undecidable in any group containing free non-abelian subgroup (though the argument is very different from the classical case of free semigroups). We show that the double endomorphism twisted conjugacy problem is undecidable in free groups of sufficiently large finite rank. We also consider the bounded $mathbfPCP$ and observe that it is in $mathbfNP$ for any group with $mathbfP$-time decidable word problem, meanwhile it is $mathbfNP$-hard in any group containing free non-abelian subgroup. In particular, the bounded $mathbfPCP$ is $mathbfNP$-complete in non-elementary hyperbolic groups and non-abelian right angle Artin groups.

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Cited in

(13)

• On the dual Post correspondence problem
• Subset sum problem in polycyclic groups
• Variations on the post correspondence problem for free groups
• On subset sum problem in branch groups
• Non-commutative lattice problems
• Logspace and compressed-word computations in nilpotent groups
• Parallel complexity for nilpotent groups
• Knapsack problems in products of groups
• \(\mathsf{TC}^0\) circuits for algorithmic problems in nilpotent groups
• Post correspondence problem with partially commutative alphabets
• Post's Correspondence Problem for hyperbolic and virtually nilpotent groups
• Computational group theory. Abstracts from the workshop held August 15--21, 2021 (hybrid meeting)
• Post's correspondence problem: from computer science to algebra

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