Related papers: On the Complexity of Sails

We give an algorithm to compute stable commutator length in free products of cyclic groups which is polynomial time in the length of the input, the number of factors, and the orders of the finite factors. We also describe some experimental…

We say that a class of finite structures for a finite first-order signature is $r$-compressible if each structure $G$ in the class has a first-order description of size at most $O(r(|G|))$. We show that the class of finite simple groups is…

We prove that for any euclidean ring R and n at least 6, Gamma=SL_n(R) has no unbounded quasi-homomorphisms. From Bavard's duality theorem, this means that the stable commutator length vanishes on Gamma. The result is particularly…

Let $S_n$ denote a symmetric group, $\chi$ an irreducible character of $S_n$, and $g\in S_n$ an element which decomposes into $k$ disjoint cycles, where $1$-cycles are included. Then $|\chi(g)|\le k!$, and this upper bound is sharp for…

The paper is a part of an ongoing program which aims to show that the existential theory in free groups (hyperbolic groups or even toral relatively hyperbolic) is NP-complete. For that we study compression of solutions with straight-line…

The computational complexity of the word problem in HNN-extension of groups is studied. HNN-extension is a fundamental construction in combinatorial group theory. It is shown that the word problem for an ascending HNN-extension of a group H…

Let $w$ be a group-word. Suppose that the set of all $w$-values in a profinite group $G$ is contained in a union of countably many subgroups. It is natural to ask in what way the structure of the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ depends on the…

We show that for any positive integer $m\ge 1$, $m$-relator quotients of the modular group $M = PSL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ generically satisfy a very strong Mostow-type \emph{isomorphism rigidity}. We also prove that such quotients are generically…

We establish a spectral gap for stable commutator length (scl) of integral chains in right-angled Artin groups (RAAGs). We show that this gap is not uniform, i.e. there are RAAGs and integral chains with scl arbitrarily close to zero. We…

We develop a new criterion to tell if a group $G$ has the maximal gap of $1/2$ in stable commutator length (scl). For amalgamated free products $G = A \star_C B$ we show that every element $g$ in the commutator subgroup of $G$ which does…

We study the bounded cohomology and the stable commutator length of verbal wreath products $\Gamma \wr^{_W}A$, where $A$ has trivial bounded cohomology for a sufficiently large class of coefficients.\\ We prove that the stable commutator…

Typing of lambda-terms in Elementary and Light Affine Logic (EAL, LAL, resp.) has been studied for two different reasons: on the one hand the evaluation of typed terms using LAL (EAL, resp.) proof-nets admits a guaranteed polynomial…

We give examples of finitely presented groups containing elements with irrational (in fact, transcendental) stable commutator length, thus answering in the negative a question of M. Gromov. Our examples come from 1-dimensional dynamics, and…

Let $F$ be a free group. We present for arbitrary $g\in\mathbb{N}$ a LogSpace (and thus polynomial time) algorithm that determines whether a given $w\in F$ is a product of at most $g$ commutators; and more generally an algorithm that…

We study the membership problem to context-free languages L (CFLs) on probabilistic words, that specify for each position a probability distribution on the letters (assuming independence across positions). Our task is to compute, given a…

We prove lower bounds on the length of regular expressions for finite languages by methods from arithmetic circuit complexity. First, we show a reduction: the length of a regular expression for a language $L\subseteq \{0,1\}^n$ is bounded…

Let $\Gamma$ be a finite index subgroup of the mapping class group $MCG(\Sigma)$ of a closed orientable surface $\Sigma$, possibly with punctures. We give a precise condition (in terms of the Nielsen-Thurston decomposition) when an element…

Let w be a group word. It is conjectured that if w has only countably many values in a profinite group G, then the verbal subgroup w(G) is finite. In the present paper we confirm the conjecture in the cases where w is a multilinear…

Let $M(A,I)$ be a free partially commutative monoid with involution and $G(A,I)$ be its quotient group, e.g. a right-angled Artin or Coxeter group. Given a system of word equations over $M(A,I)$ with recognizable constraints with input size…

We study inert, and ambiguous conjugacy classes in the modular group $\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$ from a purely combinatorial perspective. Using word length in the free product representation $\mathbb{Z}_2 * \mathbb{Z}_3$ of the modular…