English

Solving homogeneous linear equations over polynomial semirings

Rings and Algebras 2022-10-27 v2 Symbolic Computation Group Theory

Abstract

For a subset BB of R\mathbb{R}, denote by U(B)\operatorname{U}(B) be the semiring of (univariate) polynomials in R[X]\mathbb{R}[X] that are strictly positive on BB. Let N[X]\mathbb{N}[X] be the semiring of (univariate) polynomials with non-negative integer coefficients. We study solutions of homogeneous linear equations over the polynomial semirings U(B)\operatorname{U}(B) and N[X]\mathbb{N}[X]. In particular, we prove local-global principles for solving single homogeneous linear equations over these semirings. We then show PTIME decidability of determining the existence of non-zero solutions over N[X]\mathbb{N}[X] of single homogeneous linear equations. Our study of these polynomial semirings is largely motivated by several semigroup algorithmic problems in the wreath product ZZ\mathbb{Z} \wr \mathbb{Z}. As an application of our results, we show that the Identity Problem (whether a given semigroup contains the neutral element?) and the Group Problem (whether a given semigroup is a group?) for finitely generated sub-semigroups of the wreath product ZZ\mathbb{Z} \wr \mathbb{Z} is decidable when elements of the semigroup generator have the form (y,±1)(y, \pm 1).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.13347,
  title  = {Solving homogeneous linear equations over polynomial semirings},
  author = {Ruiwen Dong},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.13347},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

21 pages including appendix, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-28T02:11:36.462Z