English

The isomorphism problem for plain groups is in $\Sigma_3^{\mathsf{P}}$

Group Theory 2022-01-19 v2 Computational Complexity Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

Testing isomorphism of infinite groups is a classical topic, but from the complexity theory viewpoint, few results are known. S{\'e}nizergues and the fifth author (ICALP2018) proved that the isomorphism problem for virtually free groups is decidable in PSPACE\mathsf{PSPACE} when the input is given in terms of so-called virtually free presentations. Here we consider the isomorphism problem for the class of \emph{plain groups}, that is, groups that are isomorphic to a free product of finitely many finite groups and finitely many copies of the infinite cyclic group. Every plain group is naturally and efficiently presented via an inverse-closed finite convergent length-reducing rewriting system. We prove that the isomorphism problem for plain groups given in this form lies in the polynomial time hierarchy, more precisely, in Σ3P\Sigma_3^{\mathsf{P}}. This result is achieved by combining new geometric and algebraic characterisations of groups presented by inverse-closed finite convergent length-reducing rewriting systems developed in recent work of the second and third authors (2021) with classical finite group isomorphism results of Babai and Szemer\'edi (1984).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.00900,
  title  = {The isomorphism problem for plain groups is in $\Sigma_3^{\mathsf{P}}$},
  author = {Heiko Dietrich and Murray Elder and Adam Piggott and Youming Qiao and Armin Weiß},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.00900},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

11 pages, 0 figures. Accepted in STACS2022

R2 v1 2026-06-24T06:34:48.694Z