Word Problems and Recursively Enumerable Degrees of Unsolvability. A Sequel on Finitely Presented Groups

1966 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 49 ◽  
Author(s):  
William W. Boone
1968 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 296-297
Author(s):  
J. C. Shepherdson

2009 ◽  
Vol 02 (04) ◽  
pp. 611-635 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Kalorkoti

The algorithmic unsolvability of the conjugacy problem for finitely presented groups was demonstrated by Novikov in the early 1950s. Various simplifications and alternative proofs were found by later researchers and further questions raised. Recent work by Borovik, Myasnikov and Remeslennikov has considered the question of what proportion of the number of elements of a group (obtained by standard constructions) falls into the realm of unsolvability. In this paper we provide a straightforward construction, as a Britton tower, of a finitely presented group with solvable word problem but unsolvable conjugacy problem of any r.e. (recursively enumerable) Turing degree a. The question of whether two elements are conjugate is bounded truth-table reducible to the question of whether the elements are both conjugate to a single generator of the group. We also define computable normal forms, based on the method of Bokut', that are suitable for the conjugacy problem. We consider (ordered) pairs of normal words U, V for the conjugacy problem whose lengths add to l and show that the proportion of such pairs for which conjugacy is undecidable (in the case a ≠ 0) is strictly less than l2/(2λ - 1)l where λ > 4. The construction is based on modular machines, introduced by Aanderaa and Cohen. For the purposes of this construction it was helpful to extend the notion of configuration to include pairs of m-adic integers. The notion of computation step was also extended and is referred to as s-fold computation where s ∈ ℤ (the usual notion coresponds to s = 1). If gcd (m, s) = 1 then determinism is preserved, i.e., if the modular machine is deterministic then it remains so under the extended notion. Furthermore there is a simple correspondence between s-fold and standard computation in this case. Otherwise computation is non-deterministic and there does not seem to be any straightforward correspondence between s-fold and standard computation.


The main theorem of this paper states that a finitely generated group can be embedded in a finitely presented group if and only if it has a recursively enumerable set of defining relations. It follows that every countable A belian group, and every countable locally finite group can be so embedded; and that there exists a finitely presented group which simultaneously embeds all finitely presented groups. A nother corollary of the theorem is the known fact that there exist finitely presented groups with recursively insoluble word problem . A by-product of the proof is a genetic characterization of the recursively enumerable subsets of a suitable effectively enumerable set.


1973 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.W. Gatterdam

Finitely presented groups having word, problem solvable by functions in the relativized Grzegorczyk hierarchy, {En(A)| n ε N, A ⊂ N (N the natural numbers)} are studied. Basically the class E3 consists of the elementary functions of Kalmar and En+1 is obtained from En by unbounded recursion. The relativization En(A) is obtained by adjoining the characteristic function of A to the class En.It is shown that the Higman construction embedding, a finitely generated group with a recursively enumerable set of relations into a finitely presented group, preserves the computational level of the word problem with respect to the relativized Grzegorczyk hierarchy. As a corollary it is shown that for every n ≥ 4 and A ⊂ N recursively enumerable there exists a finitely presented group with word problem solvable at level En(A) but not En-1(A). In particular, there exist finitely presented groups with word problem solvable at level En but not En-1 for n ≥ 4, answering a question of Cannonito.


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