MULTILINEAR EQUATIONS IN AMALGAMS OF FINITE INVERSE SEMIGROUPS

Let S = S1 *U S2 = Inv〈X; R〉 be the free amalgamated product of the finite inverse semigroups S1, S2 and let Ξ be a finite set of unknowns. We consider the satisfiability problem for multilinear equations over S, i.e. equations wL ≡ wR with wL, wR ∈ (X ∪ X-1 ∪ Ξ ∪ Ξ-1)+ such that each x ∈ Ξ labels at most one edge in the Schützenberger automaton of either wL or wR relative to the presentation 〈X ∪ Ξ|R〉. We prove that the satisfiability problem for such equations is decidable using a normal form of the words wL, wR and the fact that the language recognized by the Schützenberger automaton of any word in (X ∪ X-1)+) relative to the presentation 〈X|R〉 is context-free.