A Note on Nielsen Reduction and Coset Enumeration

Birgit Reinert¹
Klaus Madlener
Fachbereich Informatik
Universität Kaiserslautern
67663 Kaiserslautern
Germany - Teo Mora
DISI
Via Dodecaneso, 35
16146 Genova
Italy

February, 1998

Abstract:

Groups can be studied using methods from different fields such as combinatorial group theory or string rewriting. Recently techniques from Gröbner basis theory for free monoid rings (non-commutative polynomial rings) respectively free group rings have been added to the set of methods due to the fact that monoid and group presentations (in terms of string rewriting systems) can be linked to special polynomials called binomials. In the same mood, the aim of this paper is to discuss the relation between Nielsen reduced sets of generators and the Todd-Coxeter coset enumeration procedure on the one side and the Gröbner basis theory for free group rings on the other. While it is well-known that there is a strong relationship between Buchberger's algorithm and the Knuth-Bendix completion procedure, and there are interpretations of the Todd-Coxeter coset enumeration procedure using the Knuth-Bendix procedure for special cases, our aim is to show how a verbatim interpretation of the Todd-Coxeter procedure can be obtained by linking recent Gröbner techniques like prefix Gröbner bases and the FGLM algorithm as a tool to study the duality of ideals. As a side product our procedure computes Nielsen reduced generating sets for subgroups in finitely generated free groups.