Every word in a free group $F$ induces a probability measure on every finite group in a natural manner. It is an open problem whether two words that induce the same measure on every finite group, necessarily belong to the same orbit of $\mathrm{Aut}F$. A special case of this problem, when one of the words is the primitive word $x$, was settled positively by the third author and Parzanchevski [arXiv:1202.3269]. Here we extend this result to the case where one of the words is $x^d$ or $\left[x,y\right]^{d}$ for an arbitrary $d\in\mathbb{Z}$.
Let u be a cyclic word in a free group F_n of finite rank n that has the minimum length over all cyclic words in its automorphic orbit, and let N(u) be the cardinality of the set {v: |v|=|u| and v= ϕ(u) for some ϕ\in \text {Aut}F_n}. In this paper, we prove that N(u) is bounded by a polynomial function with respect to |u| under the hypothesis that if two letters x, y occur in u, then the total number of x and x^{-1} occurring in u is not equal to the total number of y and y^{-1} occurring in u. A complete proof without the hypothesis would yield the polynomial time complexity of Whitehead's al…
Let u be a cyclic word in a free group F_n of finite rank n that has the minimum length over all cyclic words in its automorphic orbit, and let N(u) be the cardinality of the set {v: |v|=|u| and v=ϕ(u) for some ϕ\in AutF_n}. In this paper, we prove that N(u) is bounded by a polynomial function of degree 2n-3 with respect to |u| under the hypothesis that if two letters x, y occur in u, then the total number of x and x^{-1} occurring in u is not equal to the total number of y and y^{-1} occurring in u. We also prove that 2n-3 is the sharp bound on the degree of polynomials bounding N(u). As a sp…
We show that the following problems are decidable in a rank 2 free group F_2: does a given finitely generated subgroup H contain primitive elements? and does H meet the orbit of a given word u under the action of G, the group of automorphisms of F_2? Moreover, decidability subsists if we allow H to be a rational subset of F_2, or alternatively if we restrict G to be a rational subset of the set of invertible substitutions (a.k.a. positive automorphisms). In higher rank, we show the decidability of the following weaker problem: given a finitely generated subgroup H, a word u and an integer k, d…
Let $F_n$ be the free group of a finite rank $n$. We study orbits $Orb_ϕ(u)$, where $u$ is an element of the group $F_n$, under the action of an automorphism $ϕ$. If an orbit like that is finite, we determine precisely what its cardinality can be if $u$ runs through the whole group $F_n$, and $ϕ$ runs through the whole group $Aut(F_n)$. Another problem that we address here is related to Whitehead's algorithm that determines whether or not a given element of a free group of finite rank is an automorphic image of another given element. It is known that the first part of this algorithm (reducing …
Every word $w$ in a free group naturally induces a probability measure on every compact group $G$. For example, if $w=\left[x,y\right]$ is the commutator word, a random element sampled by the $w$-measure is given by the commutator $\left[g,h\right]$ of two independent, Haar-random elements of $G$. Back in 1896, Frobenius showed that if $G$ is a finite group and $ψ$ an irreducible character, then the expected value of $ψ\left(\left[g,h\right]\right)$ is $\frac{1}{ψ\left(e\right)}$. This is true for any compact group, and completely determines the $\left[x,y\right]$-measure on these groups. An a…
We investigate the orbits of automaton semigroups and groups to obtain algorithmic and structural results, both for general automata but also for some special subclasses. First, we show that a more general version of the finiteness problem for automaton groups is undecidable. This problem is equivalent to the finiteness problem for left principal ideals in automaton semigroups generated by complete and reversible automata. Then, we look at $ω$-word (i.e. right infinite words) with a finite orbit. We show that every automaton yielding an $ω$-word with a finite orbit already yields an ultimately…
We introduce the notion of expandability in the context of automaton semigroups and groups: a word is k-expandable if one can append a suffix to it such that the size of the orbit under the action of the automaton increases by at least k. This definition is motivated by the question which ω-words admit infinite orbits: for such a word, every prefix is expandable. In this paper, we show that, on input of a word u, an automaton T and a number k, it is decidable to check whether u is k-expandable with respect to the action of T. In fact, this can be done in exponential nondeterministic space. Fro…
We prove that the semigroup generated by a finite state Mealy automaton $\mathcal{A}=(Q,A,τ)$ is infinite if and only if there exists some right-infinite word in the alphabet $A$ with infinite orbit.
Surface groups are determined among limit groups by their profinite completions. As a corollary, the set of surface words in a free group is closed in the profinite topology.
In this paper we study the $κ$-word problem for the pseudovariety ${\bf LG}$ of local groups, where $κ$ is the canonical signature consisting of the multiplication and the pseudoinversion. We solve this problem by transforming each arbitrary $κ$-term $α$ into another one called the canonical form of $α$ and by showing that different canonical forms have different interpretations over ${\bf LG}$. The procedure of construction of these canonical forms consists in applying elementary changes determined by a certain set $Σ$ of $κ$-identities. As a consequence, $Σ$ is a basis of $κ$-identities for …
Let $G$ be a group, and let $S$ be a finite subset of $G$ that generates $G$ as a monoid. The co-word problem is the collection of words in the free monoid $S^{\ast}$ that represent non-trivial elements of $G$. A current conjecture, based originally on a conjecture of Lehnert and modified into its current form by Bleak, Matucci, and Neuhöffer, says that Thompson's group $V$ is a universal group with context-free co-word problem. In other words, it is conjectured that a group has a context-free co-word problem exactly if it is a finitely generated subgroup of $V$. Hughes introduced the class $\…
We show that an automaton group or semigroup is infinite if and only if it admits an $ω$-word (i. e. a right-infinite word) with an infinite orbit, which solves an open problem communicated to us by Ievgen V. Bondarenko. In fact, we prove a generalization of this result, which can be applied to show that finitely generated subgroups and subsemigroups as well as principal left ideals of automaton semigroups are infinite if and only if there is an $ω$ -word with an infinite orbit under their action. The proof also shows some interesting connections between the automaton semigroup and its dual. F…
Let F_m be a free group of a finite rank m > 1 and X_i, Y_j be elements in F_m. A non-empty word w(x_1,..., x_n) is called a C-test word in n letters for F_m if, whenever w(X_1,..., X_n)=w(Y_1,..., Y_n) not equal to 1, the two n-tuples (X_1,..., X_n) and (Y_1,..., Y_n) are conjugate in F_m. In this paper we construct, for each n > 1, a C-test word v_n(x_1,..., x_n) with the additional property that v_n(X_1,..., X_n)=1 if and only if the subgroup of F_m generated by X_1,..., X_n is cyclic. Making use of such words v_m(x_1,..., x_m) and v_{m+1}(x_1,..., x_{m+1}), we provide a positive solution t…
Let S be a closed surface of genus at least 2. We show that a finitely generated group G which is an extension of the fundamental group H of S is word hyperbolic if and only the orbit map of the quotient group G/H on the complex of curves is a quasi-isometric embedding.This in turn is equivalent to G/H being convex cocompact in the sense of Farb and Mosher.
A group with a geometric action on some hyperbolic space is necessarily word hyperbolic, but on the other hand every countable group acts (metrically) properly by isometries on a locally finite hyperbolic graph. In this paper we consider what happens when a group acts isometrically on a restricted class of hyperbolic spaces, for instance quasitrees. We obtain strong conclusions on the group structure if the action has a locally finite orbit, especially if the group is finitely generated. We also look at group actions on finite products of quasitrees, where our actions may be by automorphisms o…
It is well known that the automorphism group of a regular dessin is a two-generator finite group, and the isomorphism classes of regular dessins with automorphism groups isomorphic to a given finite group $G$ are in one-to-one correspondence with the orbits of the action of $\Aut(G)$ on the ordered generating pairs of $G$. If there is only one orbit, then up to isomorphism the regular dessin is uniquely determined by the group $G$ and it is called uniquely regular. In the paper we investigate the classification of uniquely regular dessins with a nilpotent automorphism group. The problem is red…
A subset of a group is characteristic if it is invariant under every automorphism of the group. We study word length in fundamental groups of closed hyperbolic surfaces with respect to characteristic generating sets consisting of a finite union of orbits of the automorphism group, and show that the translation length of any element with nonzero crossing number is positive, and bounded below by a constant depending only (and explicitly) on a bound on the crossing numbers of generating elements. This answers a question of B. Farb.
The Whitehead minimization problem consists in finding a minimum size element in the automorphic orbit of a word, a cyclic word or a finitely generated subgroup in a finite rank free group. We give the first fully polynomial algorithm to solve this problem, that is, an algorithm that is polynomial both in the length of the input word and in the rank of the free group. Earlier algorithms had an exponential dependency in the rank of the free group. It follows that the primitivity problem -- to decide whether a word is an element of some basis of the free group -- and the free factor problem can …
For every finitely generated free group we construct an explicit left order extending the lexicographic order on the free monoid generated by the positive letters. The order is defined by a left, free action on the orbit of 0 of a free group of piecewise linear homeomorphisms of the line. The membership in the positive cone is decidable in linear time in the length of the input word. The positive cone forms a context-free language closed under word reversal.
We prove that every finite idempotent semigroup (band) is finitely related, which means that the clone of its term operations (i.e. operations induced by words) is determined by finitely many relations. This solves an open problem posed by Peter Mayr in 2013.
Consider a group word w in n letters. For a compact group G, w induces a map G^n \rightarrow G$ and thus a pushforward measure μ_w on G from the Haar measure on G^n. We associate to each word w a 2-dimensional cell complex X(w) and prove in Theorem 2.5 that μ_w is determined by the topology of X(w). The proof makes use of non-abelian cohomology and Nielsen's classification of automorphisms of free groups [Nie24]. Focusing on the case when X(w) is a surface, we rediscover representation-theoretic formulas for μ_w that were derived by Witten in the context of quantum gauge theory [Wit91]. These …
All finite simple groups are determined with the property that every Galois orbit on conjugacy classes has size at most 4. From this we list all finite simple groups $G$ for which the normalized group of central units of the integral group ring ZG is an infinite cyclic group.
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 are determined) by randomly chosen k-tuples of reduced words, whose maximal length is allowed to tend to infinity. In this paper we adopt a different, though equally natural point of view: we investigate the statistical properties of the same objects, but with respect to the so-called graph-based distribution, recently introduced by Bassino, Nicaud and Weil.…
