No Arabic abstract
We show that the full set of solutions to systems of equations and inequations in a hyperbolic group, with or without torsion, as shortlex geodesic words, is an EDT0L language whose specification can be computed in $mathsf{NSPACE}(n^2log n)$ for the torsion-free case and $mathsf{NSPACE}(n^4log n)$ in the torsion case. Our work combines deep geometric results by Rips, Sela, Dahmani and Guirardel on decidability of existential theories of hyperbolic groups, work of computer scientists including Plandowski, Je.z, Diekert and others on $mathsf{PSPACE}$ algorithms to solve equations in free monoids and groups using compression, and an intricate language-theoretic analysis. The present work gives an essentially optimal formal language description for all solutions in all hyperbolic groups, and an explicit and surprising low space complexity to compute them.
It is well known that the problem solving equations in virtually free groups can be reduced to the problem of solving twisted word equations with regular constraints over free monoids with involution. In this paper we prove that the set of all solutions of a twisted word equation is an EDT0L language whose specification can be computed in $mathsf{PSPACE}$. Within the same complexity bound we can decide whether the solution set is empty, finite, or infinite. In the second part of the paper we apply the results for twisted equations to obtain in $mathsf{PSPACE}$ an EDT0L description of the solution set of equations with rational constraints for finitely generated virtually free groups in standard normal forms with respect to a natural set of generators. If the rational constraints are given by a homomorphism into a fixed (or small enough) finite monoid, then our algorithms can be implemented in $mathsf{NSPACE}(n^2log n)$, that is, in quasi-quadratic nondeterministic space. Our results generalize the work by Lohrey and Senizergues (ICALP 2006) and Dahmani and Guirardel (J. of Topology 2010) with respect to both complexity and expressive power. Neither paper gave any concrete complexity bound and the results in these papers are stated for subsets of solutions only, whereas our results concern all solutions.
We show that the full set of solutions to systems of equations and inequations in a hyperbolic group, as shortlex geodesic words (or any regular set of quasigeodesic normal forms), is an EDT0L language whose specification can be computed in NSPACE$(n^2log n)$ for the torsion-free case and NSPACE$(n^4log n)$ in the torsion case. Furthermore, in the presence of quasi-isometrically embeddable rational constraints, we show that the full set of solutions to systems of equations in a hyperbolic group remains EDT0L. Our work combines the geometric results of Rips, Sela, Dahmani and Guirardel on the decidability of the existential theory of hyperbolic groups with the work of computer scientists including Plandowski, Je.z, Diekert and others on PSPACE algorithms to solve equations in free monoids and groups using compression, and involves an intricate language-theoretic analysis.
We study conjugacy classes of solutions to systems of equations and inequations over torsion-free hyperbolic groups, and describe an algorithm to recognize whether or not there are finitely many conjugacy classes of solutions to such a system. The class of immutable subgroups of hyperbolic groups is introduced, which is fundamental to the study of equations in this context. We apply our results to enumerate the immutable subgroups of a torsion-free hyperbolic group.
Let $Gamma$ be a torsion-free hyperbolic group. We show that the set of solutions of any system of equations with one variable in $Gamma$ is a finite union of points and cosets of centralizers if and only if any two-generator subgroup of $Gamma$ is free.
Sela proved every torsion-free one-ended hyperbolic group is coHopfian. We prove that there exist torsion-free one-ended hyperbolic groups that are not commensurably coHopfian. In particular, we show that the fundamental group of every simple surface amalgam is not commensurably coHopfian.