Related papers: New results on the prefix membership problem for o…
We prove that, for a finitely generated residually finite group, having solvable word problem is not a sufficient condition to be a subgroup of a finitely presented residually finite group. The obstruction is given by a residually finite…
An important endeavor in computer science is to understand the expressive power of logical formalisms over discrete structures, such as words. Naturally, "understanding" is not a mathematical notion. This investigation requires therefore a…
We show that for any $i > 0$, it is decidable, given a regular language, whether it is expressible in the $\Sigma_i[<]$ fragment of first-order logic FO[<]. This settles a question open since 1971. Our main technical result relies on the…
We consider various decision problems for automatic semigroups, which involve the provision of an automatic structure as part of the problem instance. With mild restrictions on the automatic structure, which seem to be necessary to make the…
We consider membership problems for rational subsets of the semigroup of $2\times 2$ matrices over $\mathbb{Q}$. For a semigroup $M$, the rational subsets $\mathrm{Rat}(M)$ are defined as the sets accepted by NFAs whose transitions are…
This is a survey of two papers joint with A. Borisov and a paper joint with I. Spakulova. It is based on my lectures at the conference "Groups St. Andrews 2009", Bath (August 2009). We prove that almost all 1-related groups with at least 3…
We give a general lower bound on the rank of matrices of the form $\rho(h) - I$ with $\rho : G \rightarrow GL({\mathbb F}^n)$ an irreducible representation of a finite group $G$. The main tool in the proof is a (strengthening) of a…
In this paper we explore the connections between the class of Visibly Pushdown Languages ($\mathbf{VPL}$) and the natural sets of words one can associate to a finitely generated group. We show that the word problem of a finitely generated…
Algorithmic issues concerning Elliott local semigroups are seldom considered in the literature, although these combinatorial structures completely classify AF algebras. In general, the addition operation of an Elliott local semigroup is…
William W. Boone and Graham Higman proved that a finitely generated group has soluble word problem if and only if it can be embedded in a simple group that can be embedded in a finitely presented group. We prove the exact analogue for…
In this series of papers, we investigate properties of a finite group which are determined by its low degree irreducible representations over a number field $F$, i.e. its representations on matrix rings $\operatorname{M}_n(D)$ with $n \leq…
Let $G$ be a group, and let $S$ be a finite subset of $G$ that generates $G$ as a monoid. The co-word problem is the collection of words in the free monoid $S^{\ast}$ that represent non-trivial elements of $G$. A current conjecture, based…
We apply the method of Arzhantseva-Ol'shanskii to prove that for an exponentially generic (in the sense of Ol'shanskii) class of one-relator groups the isomorphism problem is solvable in at most exponential time. This is obtained as a…
The category of all idempotent generated semigroups with a prescribed structure $\mathcal{E}$ of their idempotents $E$ (called the biordered set) has an initial object called the free idempotent generated semigroup over $\mathcal{E}$,…
Previously, the authors proved that the presentation complex of a one-relator group $G$ satisfies a geometric condition called negative immersions if every two-generator, one-relator subgroup of $G$ is free. Here, we prove that one-relator…
We consider the Membership and the Half-Space Reachability problems for matrices in dimensions two and three. Our first main result is that the Membership Problem is decidable for finitely generated sub-semigroups of the Heisenberg group…
Several recent problems in the representation theory of finite groups require determining whether certain characters of almost simple groups belong to the principal block. Since the values of these characters are not yet known, we employ…
We investigate criteria ensuring that a one-relator group $G$ contains a right-angled Artin subgroup $A(\Gamma)$, corresponding to a finite graph $\Gamma$. In particular, we prove that if $\Gamma$ is a forest with at least one edge and the…
We show that the compressed word problem in a finitely-generated fully residually free group (F -group) is decidable in polynomial time, and use the result to show that the word problem in the automorphism group of such a group is decidable…
This article studies two notions of generalized matroid representations motivated by algorithmic information theory and cryptographic secret sharing. The first (entropic representability) involves discrete random variables, while the second…