English

Solutions of Word Equations over Partially Commutative Structures

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2025-06-11 v3 Logic in Computer Science Group Theory

Abstract

Let M(A,I)M(A,I) be a free partially commutative monoid with involution and G(A,I)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)M(A,I) with recognizable constraints with input size nn we show the structural result about the solution set of the system: the set of all solutions in M(A,I)M(A,I) or in the group G(A,I)G(A,I) is an EDT0L language. That is, it is given by an NFA A\mathcal{A} recognizing endomorphisms over some extended monoid. Moreover, A\mathcal{A} is effectively constructible by an NSPACE(nlognn \log n)-transducer. This implies that Satisfiability: `Is the system is solvable?' and Finiteness: `Are there infinitely many solutions?' can be decided in NSPACE(nlognn \log n). In the uniform version, these problems are PSPACE-complete, but for a suitable subclass of constraints we have more precise complexities and we conjecture that the decision problems above are NP-complete in this setting. Our results apply also to word equation over free monoids in the classical case where the involution is reading words right-to-left. This allows to specify that solutions are restricted to be palindromes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1603.02966,
  title  = {Solutions of Word Equations over Partially Commutative Structures},
  author = {Volker Diekert and Artur Jeż and Manfred Kufleitner and Alexander Thumm},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.02966},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

83 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T13:07:24.005Z