Invariants And Pictures: Low-dimensional Topology And Combinatorial Group Theory. Vassily Olegovich Manturov
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If W does not have such subwords, then we may state that W ≠ 1 in the group G. If such a subword X exists, then replace it with the word Y−1 in the word W. We obtain a word W′ such that W = W′ in the group G and |W′| < |W|, since |Y| < |X|. Therefore by induction we can determine whether W′ = 1 in the group G. Thus the problem for the word W is solved.
The key element of this algorithm is, of course, the Greendlinger theorem which holds for the groups with the condition C′(λ) for
It is worth mentioning that Goldberg [Goldberg, 1978] proved that for
Note that the Dehn and Goldberg results leave the “gap”
1.4The Diamond lemma
In the present section we briefly consider a well-known Newman lemma (also known as the Diamond lemma in the literature) [Newman, 1942]. This lemma is a very powerful tool for constructing a minimal form, proving uniqueness theorems and solving word and other problems.
Let A be a set and let → denote a binary relation on the set A.
Definition 1.10. A relation → is called well-founded (or Noetherian) if every non-empty subset X ⊂ A has a minimal element, that is, there exists a ∈ X such that the relation a → b does not hold for any b ∈ X.
Alternatively, one can say that a relation is well-founded if the set A does not contain any infinite decreasing chains in the sense of that relation.
For a relation → let us denote by
Definition 1.11. A relation → is called locally confluent if for every three elements a, b, c ∈ A such that
there exists an element d ∈ A such that
This condition is sometimes formulated in the form “every covering is bounded below” in the system (A, →).
Definition 1.12. The relation → is called confluent if for every three elements a, b, c ∈ A such that
there exists an element d ∈ A such that
Lemma 1.5 (The Diamond lemma [Newman, 1942]). If a relation → is well-founded and locally confluent, then the relation → is confluent.
Proof. Let the relation → be well-founded and locally confluent and let a, b, c ∈ A be elements such that a
Let us call two elements y, z ∈ A joinable if there exists an element h ∈ A such that y
If we denote by →+ the transitive closure of the relation →, the induction is of the form “to show P(x) under the assumption P(t) for all t such that x →+ t”. This induction is valid because the relation → is well-founded.
Now let us consider an element x ∈ A and the divergence x
This lemma essentially means that, if the conditions of well-foundedness