English

Knapsack in hyperbolic groups

Group Theory 2019-04-10 v2 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

Recently knapsack problems have been generalized from the integers to arbitrary finitely generated groups. The knapsack problem for a finitely generated group GG is the following decision problem: given a tuple (g,g1,,gk)(g, g_1, \ldots, g_k) of elements of GG, are there natural numbers n1,,nkNn_1, \ldots, n_k \in \mathbb{N} such that g=g1n1gknkg = g_1^{n_1} \cdots g_k^{n_k} holds in GG? Myasnikov, Nikolaev, and Ushakov proved that for every (Gromov-)hyperbolic group, the knapsack problem can be solved in polynomial time. In this paper, the precise complexity of the knapsack problem for hyperbolic group is determined: for every hyperbolic group GG, the knapsack problem belongs to the complexity class LogCFL\mathsf{LogCFL}, and it is LogCFL\mathsf{LogCFL}-complete if GG contains a free group of rank two. Moreover, it is shown that for every hyperbolic group GG and every tuple (g,g1,,gk)(g, g_1, \ldots, g_k) of elements of GG the set of all (n1,,nk)Nk(n_1, \ldots, n_k) \in \mathbb{N}^k such that g=g1n1gknkg = g_1^{n_1} \cdots g_k^{n_k} in GG is semilinear and a semilinear representation where all integers are of size polynomial in the total geodesic length of the g,g1,,gkg, g_1, \ldots, g_k can be computed. Groups with this property are also called knapsack-tame. This enables us to show that knapsack can be solved in LogCFL\mathsf{LogCFL} for every group that belongs to the closure of hyperbolic groups under free products and direct products with Z\mathbb{Z}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1807.06774,
  title  = {Knapsack in hyperbolic groups},
  author = {Markus Lohrey},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.06774},
  year   = {2019}
}