Related papers: The Word Problem for One-relation Monoids: A Surve…
We prove the following results: (1) There is a one-relator inverse monoid $\mathrm{Inv}\langle A\:|\:w=1 \rangle$ with undecidable word problem; and (2) There are one-relator groups with undecidable submonoid membership problem. The first…
We study the language-theoretic properties of the word problem, in the sense of Duncan & Gilman, of weakly compressible monoids, as defined by Adian & Oganesian. We show that if $\mathcal{C}$ is a reversal-closed super-$\operatorname{AFL}$,…
Motivated by approaches to the word problem for one-relation monoids arising from work of Adian and Oganesian (1987), Guba (1997), and Ivanov, Margolis and Meakin (2001), we study the submonoid and rational subset membership problems in…
We develop a combinatorial approach to the study of semigroups and monoids with finite presentations satisfying small overlap conditions. In contrast to existing geometric methods, our approach facilitates a sequential left-right analysis…
In this paper we prove several results regarding decidability of the membership problem for certain submonoids in amalgamated free products and HNN extensions of groups. These general results are then applied to solve the prefix membership…
A special inverse monoid is one defined by a presentation where all the defining relations have the form $r = 1$. By a result of Ivanov Margolis and Meakin the word problem for such an inverse monoid can often be reduced to the word problem…
We investigate systems of equations and the first-order theory of one-relator monoids. We describe a family $\mathcal{F}$ of one-relator monoids of the form $\langle A\mid w=1\rangle$ where for each monoid $M$ in $\mathcal{F}$, the…
A monoid is called special if it admits a presentation in which all defining relations are of the form $w = 1$. Every group is special, but not every monoid is special. In this article, we describe the language-theoretic properties of the…
Motivated by the study of word problems of monoids, we explore two ways of viewing binary relations on $A^*$ as languages. We exhibit a hierarchy of classes of binary relations on $A^*$, according to the class of languages the relation…
This note investigates and clarifies some connections between the theory of one-relator groups and special one-relation inverse monoids, i.e. those inverse monoids with a presentation of the form $\operatorname{Inv}\langle A \mid w=1…
We propose a way of associating to each finitely generated monoid or semigroup a formal language, called its loop problem. In the case of a group, the loop problem is essentially the same as the word problem in the sense of combinatorial…
This is an English translation of three articles, originally written in German, by Wilhelm Magnus (1907--1990). The articles are from 1930, 1931, and 1932, respectively, and were the first articles published on one-relator group theory. The…
We describe a simple scheme for constructing finitely generated monoids in which left-divisibility is a linear ordering and for practically investigating these monoids. The approach is based on subword reversing, a general method of…
A prefix monoid is a finitely generated submonoid of a finitely presented group generated by the prefixes of its defining relators. Important results of Guba (1997), and of Ivanov, Margolis and Meakin (2001), show how the word problem for…
We study membership problems in HNN extensions of free groups and then apply these results to solve the word problem in certain families of one-relator inverse monoids. In more detail, we consider HNN extensions where the defining…
This paper considers the word problem for free inverse monoids of finite rank from a language theory perspective. It is shown that no free inverse monoid has context-free word problem; that the word problem of the free inverse monoid of…
We summarize the main known results involving subword reversing, a method of semigroup theory for constructing van Kampen diagrams by referring to a preferred direction. In good cases, the method provides a powerful tool for investigating…
We describe several technical tools that prove to be efficient for investigating the rewrite systems associated with a family of algebraic laws, and might be useful for more general rewrite systems. These tools consist in introducing a…
The Union Closed Sets Conjecture is one of the most renowned problems in combinatorics. Its appeal lies in the simplicity of its statement contrasted with the potential complexity of its resolution. The conjecture posits that, in any union…
In the first part of this survey, we present classical notions arising in combinatorics on words: growth function of a language, complexity function of an infinite word, pattern avoidance, periodicity and uniform recurrence. Our…