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This paper studies the free group of rank two from the point of view of Stallings core graphs. The first half of the paper examines primitive elements in this group, giving new and self-contained proofs for various known results about them.…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2014-05-29 Ori Parzanchevski , Doron Puder

The most developed aspect of the theory of finite semigroups is their classification in pseudovarieties. The main motivation for investigating such entities comes from their connection with the classification of regular languages via…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2025-04-14 Jorge Almeida

We give new and improved results on the freeness of subgroups of free profinite groups: A subgroup containing the normal closure of a finite word in the elements of a basis is free; Every infinite index subgroup of a finitely generated…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2017-05-17 Mark Shusterman

A reconstruction problem of words from scattered factors asks for the minimal information, like multisets of scattered factors of a given length or the number of occurrences of scattered factors from a given set, necessary to uniquely…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2020-03-17 Pamela Fleischmann , Marie Lejeune , Florin Manea , Dirk Nowotka , Michel Rigo

Let $F$ be a finite-rank free group and $H$ be a finite-rank subgroup of $F$. We discuss proofs of two algorithms that sandwich $H$ between an upper-layer free-product factor of $F$ that contains $H$ and a lower-layer free-product factor of…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2015-05-12 Warren Dicks

This paper deals with the decidability of semigroup freeness. More precisely, the freeness problem over a semigroup S is defined as: given a finite subset X of S, decide whether each element of S has at most one factorization over X. To…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2012-05-07 Julien Cassaigne , Francois Nicolas

For an arbitrary rational polyhedron we consider its decompositions into Minkowski summands and, dual to this, the free extensions of the associated pair of semigroups. Being free for the pair of semigroups is equivalent to flatness for the…

Algebraic Geometry · Mathematics 2020-04-17 Klaus Altmann , Alexandru Constantinescu , Matej Filip

We present an algorithm to explore various properties of the numerical semigroups with a given maximum primitive. In particular, we count the number of such numerical semigroups and verify that there is no counterexample to Wilf's…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2026-01-01 Manuel Delgado , Neeraj Kumar

The usual way to investigate the statistical properties of finitely generated subgroups of free groups, and of finite presentations of groups, is based on the so-called word-based distribution: subgroups are generated (finite presentations…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2013-03-21 Frédérique Bassino , Armando Martino , Cyril Nicaud , Enric Ventura , Pascal Weil

It is shown that the big free group (the set of countably-long words over a countable alphabet) is almost free, in the sense that any function from the alphabet to a compact topological group factors through a homomorphism. This statement…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2015-06-12 Tamer Tlas

Minimal forbidden factors are a useful tool for investigating properties of words and languages. Two factorial languages are distinct if and only if they have different (antifactorial) sets of minimal forbidden factors. There exist…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2018-05-28 Gabriele Fici , Antonio Restivo , Laura Rizzo

The palindromic length of a finite word $w$ is defined as the minimal number of palindromes such that their product is $w$. Clearly, this function may take different values depending on if we consider $w$ as an element a free semigroup or…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-12-12 Anna E. Frid

The theorem of factorisation forests shows the existence of nested factorisations -- a la Ramsey -- for finite words. This theorem has important applications in semigroup theory, and beyond. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Thomas Colcombet

We generalize the combinatorial approaches of Rapaport and Higgins--Lyndon to the Whitehead algorithm. We show that for every automorphism $\varphi$ of a free group $F$ and every word $u\in F$ there exists a finite multiset of words…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2022-12-02 Noam M. D. Kolodner

Recent algorithmic advances in algebraic automata theory drew attention to semigroupoids (semicategories). These are mathematical descriptions of typed computational processes, but they have not been studied systematically in the context of…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Attila Egri-Nagy , Chrystopher L. Nehaniv

We prove that Whitehead's algorithm for solving the automorphism problem in a fixed free group $F_k$ has strongly linear time generic-case complexity. This is done by showing that the ``hard'' part of the algorithm terminates in linear time…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Ilya Kapovich , Paul Schupp , Vladimir Shpilrain

This article focuses on free factors H <= F_m of the free group F_m with finite rank m > 2, and specifically addresses the implications of Ascari's refinement of the Whitehead automorphism phi for H as introduced in \cite{ascari2021fine}.…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2026-01-29 Asif Shaikh

We re-cast in a more combinatorial and computational form the foldings approach of John Stallings and pursue a detailed study of the subgroup structure of free groups. In particular, we introduce the notions of an "algebraic" and a "free"…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2007-05-23 Ilya Kapovich , Alexei Myasnikov

We give an estimation of the existence density for the $2d$ different primes by using a new and simple algorithm for getting the $2d$ different primes. The algorithm is a kind of the sieve method, but the remainders are the central numbers…

Number Theory · Mathematics 2014-02-27 Minoru Fujimoto , Kunihiko Uehara

We find a lower bound to the size of finite groups detecting a given word in the free group, more precisely we construct a word w_n of length n in non-abelian free groups with the property that w_n is the identity on all finite quotients of…

Group Theory · Mathematics 2011-05-19 Martin Kassabov , Francesco Matucci