We show that the metaproblem for coset-generating polymorphisms is NP-complete, answering a question of Chen and Larose: given a finite structure, the computational question is whether this structure has a polymorphism of the form (x,y,z) ↦ x y^{-1} z with respect to some group; such operations are also called coset-generating, or heaps. Furthermore, we introduce a promise version of the metaproblem, parametrised by two polymorphism conditions Σ₁ and Σ₂ and defined analogously to the promise constraint satisfaction problem. We give sufficient conditions under which the promise metaproblem for (Σ₁,Σ₂) is in 𝖯 and under which it is NP-hard. In particular, the promise metaproblem is in 𝖯 if Σ₁ states the existence of a Maltsev polymorphism and Σ₂ states the existence of an abelian heap polymorphism - despite the fact that neither the metaproblem for Σ₁ nor the metaproblem for Σ₂ is known to be in 𝖯. We also show that the creation-metaproblem for Maltsev polymorphisms, under the promise that a heap polymorphism exists, is in 𝖯 if and only if there is a uniform polynomial-time algorithm for CSPs with a heap polymorphism.

The circuit satisfaction problem CSAT(A) of an algebra A is the problem of deciding whether an equation over A (encoded by two circuits) has a solution or not. While solving systems of equations over finite algebras is either in P or NP-complete, no such dichotomy result is known for CSAT(A). In fact, Idziak, Kawalek and Krzaczkowski constructed examples of nilpotent Maltsev algebras A, for which, under the assumption of ETH and an open conjecture in circuit theory, CSAT(A) can be solved in quasipolynomial, but not polynomial time. The same is true for the circuit equivalence problem CEQV(A). In this paper we generalize their result to all nilpotent Maltsev algebras of Fitting length >2. This not only advances the project of classifying the complexity of CSAT (and CEQV) for algebras from congruence modular varieties, but we also believe that the tools we developed are of independent interest in the study of nilpotent algebras.

Straight-line programs are a central tool in several areas of computer science, including data compression, algebraic complexity theory, and the algorithmic solution of algebraic equations. In the algebraic setting, where straight-line programs can be interpreted as circuits over algebraic structures such as semigroups or groups, they have led to deep insights in computational complexity. A key result by Babai and Szemerédi (1984) showed that finite groups afford efficient compression via straight-line programs, enabling the design of a black-box computation model for groups. Building on their result, Fleischer (2019) placed the Cayley table membership problem for certain classes (pseudovarieties) of finite semigroups in NPOLYLOGTIME, and in some cases even in FOLL. He also provided a complete classification of pseudovarieties of finite monoids affording efficient compression. In this work, we complete this classification program initiated by Fleischer, characterizing precisely those pseudovarieties of finite semigroups that afford efficient compression via straight-line programs. Along the way, we also improve several known bounds on the length and width of straight-line programs over semigroups, monoids, and groups. These results lead to new upper bounds for the membership problem in the Cayley table model: for all pseudovarieties that afford efficient compression and do not contain any nonsolvable group, we obtain FOLL algorithms. In particular, we resolve a conjecture of Barrington, Kadau, Lange, and McKenzie (2001), showing that the membership problem for all solvable groups is in FOLL.

The membership problem for an algebraic structure asks whether a given element is contained in some substructure, which is usually given by generators. In this work we study the membership problem, as well as the conjugacy problem, for finite inverse semigroups. The closely related membership problem for finite semigroups has been shown to be PSPACE-complete in the transformation model by Kozen (1977) and NL-complete in the Cayley table model by Jones, Lien, and Laaser (1976). More recently, both the membership and the conjugacy problem for finite inverse semigroups were shown to be PSPACE-complete in the partial bijection model by Jack (2023). Here we present a more detailed analysis of the complexity of the membership and conjugacy problems parametrized by varieties of finite inverse semigroups. We establish dichotomy theorems for the partial bijection model and for the Cayley table model. In the partial bijection model these problems are in NC (resp. NP for conjugacy) for strict inverse semigroups and PSPACE-complete otherwise. In the Cayley table model we obtain general 𝖫-algorithms as well as NPOLYLOGTIME upper bounds for Clifford semigroups and 𝖫-completeness otherwise. Furthermore, by applying our findings, we show the following: the intersection non-emptiness problem for inverse automata is PSPACE-complete even for automata with only two states; the subpower membership problem is in NC for every strict inverse semigroup and PSPACE-complete otherwise; the minimum generating set and the equation satisfiability problems are in NP for varieties of finite strict inverse semigroups and PSPACE-complete otherwise.

The Constant Degree Hypothesis was introduced by Barrington et. al. [David A. Mix Barrington et al., 1990] to study some extensions of q-groups by nilpotent groups and the power of these groups in a computation model called NuDFA (non-uniform DFA). In its simplest formulation, it establishes exponential lower bounds for MOD_q∘MOD_m∘AND_d circuits computing AND of unbounded arity n (for constant integers d,m and a prime q). While it has been proved in some special cases (including d = 1), it remains wide open in its general form for over 30 years. In this paper we prove that the hypothesis holds when we restrict our attention to symmetric circuits with m being a prime. While we build upon techniques by Grolmusz and Tardos [Vince Grolmusz and Gábor Tardos, 2000], we have to prove a new symmetric version of their Degree Decreasing Lemma and use it to simplify circuits in a symmetry-preserving way. Moreover, to establish the result, we perform a careful analysis of automorphism groups of MOD_m∘AND_d subcircuits and study the periodic behaviour of the computed functions. Our methods also yield lower bounds when d is treated as a function of n. Finally, we present a construction of symmetric MOD_q∘MOD_m∘AND_d circuits that almost matches our lower bound and conclude that a symmetric function f can be computed by symmetric MOD_q∘MOD_p∘AND_d circuits of quasipolynomial size if and only if f has periods of polylogarithmic length of the form p^k q^𝓁.

We investigate the constant-depth circuit complexity of the Isomorphism Problem, Minimum Generating Set Problem (MGS), and Sub(quasi)group Membership Problem (Membership) for groups and quasigroups (=Latin squares), given as input in terms of their multiplication (Cayley) tables. Despite decades of research on these problems, lower bounds for these problems even against depth-2 <?TeX $\mathsf {AC}$?> Math 1 circuits remain unknown. Perhaps surprisingly, Chattopadhyay, Torán, and Wagner (FSTTCS 2010; ACM Trans. Comput. Theory, 2013) showed that Quasigroup Isomorphism could be solved by <?TeX $\mathsf {AC}$?> Math 2 circuits of depth O(log log n) using O(log 2n) nondeterministic bits, a class we denote <?TeX $\exists ^{\log ^{2}n}\mathsf {FOLL}$?> Math 3 . We narrow this gap by improving the upper bound for these problems to <?TeX $\mathsf {quasiAC^0}$?> Math 4 , thus decreasing the depth to constant.

Abstract The study of the complexity of the equation satisfiability problem in finite groups had been initiated by Goldmann and Russell in (Inf. Comput. 178(1), 253–262, 2002) where they showed that this problem is in for nilpotent groups while it is -complete for non-solvable groups. Since then, several results have appeared showing that the problem can be solved in polynomial time in certain solvable groups G having a nilpotent normal subgroup H with nilpotent factor G/H. This paper shows that such a normal subgroup must exist in each finite group with equation satisfiability solvable in polynomial time, unless the Exponential Time Hypothesis fails.

Abstract The power word problem for a group $$\varvec{G}$$ G asks whether an expression $$\varvec{u_1^{x_1} \cdots u_n^{x_n}}$$ u 1 x 1 ⋯ u n x n , where the $$\varvec{u_i}$$ u i are words over a finite set of generators of $$\varvec{G}$$ G and the $$\varvec{x_i}$$ x i binary encoded integers, is equal to the identity of $$\varvec{G}$$ G . It is a restriction of the compressed word problem, where the input word is represented by a straight-line program (i.e., an algebraic circuit over $$\varvec{G}$$ G ). We start by showing some easy results concerning the power word problem. In particular, the power word problem for a group $$\varvec{G}$$ G is $$\varvec{\textsf{uNC}^{1}}$$ uNC 1 -many-one reducible to the power word problem for a finite-index subgroup of $$\varvec{G}$$ G . For our main result, we consider graph products of groups that do not have elements of order two. We show that the power word problem in a fixed such graph product is $$\varvec{\textsf{AC} ^0}$$ AC 0 -Turing-reducible to the word problem for the free group $$\varvec{F_2}$$ F 2 and the power word problems of the base groups. Furthermore, we look into the uniform power word problem in a graph product, where the dependence graph and the base groups are part of the input. Given a class of finitely generated groups $$\varvec{\mathcal {C}}$$ C without order two elements, the uniform power word problem in a graph product can be solved in $$\varvec{\textsf{AC} ^0[\textsf{C}_=\textsf{L} ^{{{\,\textrm{UPowWP}\,}}(\mathcal {C})}]}$$ AC 0 [ C = L UPowWP ( C ) ] , where $$\varvec{{{\,\textrm{UPowWP}\,}}(\mathcal {C})}$$ UPowWP ( C ) denotes the uniform power word problem for groups from the class $$\varvec{\mathcal {C}}$$ C . As a consequence of our results, the uniform knapsack problem in right-angled Artin groups is $$\varvec{\textsf{NP}}$$ NP -complete. The present paper is a combination of the two conference papers (Lohrey and Weiß 2019b, Stober and Weiß 2022a). In Stober and Weiß (2022a) our results on graph products were wrongly stated without the additional assumption that the base groups do not have elements of order two. In the present work we correct this mistake. While we strongly conjecture that the result as stated in Stober and Weiß (2022a) is true, our proof relies on this additional assumption.

It is a long-standing open question to determine the minimum number of comparisons S (n) that suffice to sort an array of n elements. Indeed, before this work, S(n) has been known only for n ≤ 22 with the exception of n = 16, 17, and 18.

Abstract Power circuits have been introduced in 2012 by Myasnikov, Ushakov and Won as a data structure for non-elementarily compressed integers supporting the arithmetic operations addition and $$(x,y) \mapsto x\cdot 2^y$$ ( x , y ) ↦ x · 2 y . The same authors applied power circuits to give a polynomial time solution to the word problem of the Baumslag group, which has a non-elementary Dehn function. In this work, we examine power circuits and the word problem of the Baumslag group under parallel complexity aspects. In particular, we establish that the word problem of the Baumslag group can be solved in NC $$\textemdash$$ — even though one of the essential steps is to compare two integers given by power circuits and this, in general, is shown to be P-complete. The key observation is that the depth of the occurring power circuits is logarithmic and such power circuits can be compared in NC.

Abstract We construct an automaton group with a -complete word problem, proving a conjecture due to Steinberg. Additionally, the constructed group has a provably more difficult, namely -complete, compressed word problem and acts over a binary alphabet. Thus, it is optimal in terms of the alphabet size. Our construction directly simulates the computation of a Turing machine in an automaton group and, therefore, seems to be quite versatile. It combines two ideas: the first one is a construction used by D’Angeli, Rodaro and the first author to obtain an inverse automaton semigroup with a -complete word problem and the second one is to utilize a construction used by Barrington to simulate Boolean circuits of bounded degree and logarithmic depth in the group of even permutations over five elements.

Testing isomorphism of infinite groups is a classical topic, but from the complexity theory viewpoint, few results are known. Sénizergues and the fifth author (ICALP2018) proved that the isomorphism problem for virtually free groups is decidable in PSPACE when the input is given in terms of so-called virtually free presentations. Here we consider the isomorphism problem for the class of plain groups, that is, groups that are isomorphic to a free product of finitely many finite groups and finitely many copies of the infinite cyclic group. Every plain group is naturally and efficiently presented via an inverse-closed finite convergent length-reducing rewriting system. We prove that the isomorphism problem for plain groups given in this form lies in the polynomial time hierarchy, more precisely, in ΣP3. This result is achieved by combining new geometric and algebraic characterisations of groups presented by inverse-closed finite convergent length-reducing rewriting systems developed in recent work of the second and third authors (2021) with classical finite group isomorphism results of Babai and Szemerédi (1984).

Power circuits have been introduced in 2012 by Myasnikov, Ushakov and Won as a data structure for non-elementarily compressed integers supporting the arithmetic operations addition and (x,y) ↦ x⋅2^y. The same authors applied power circuits to give a polynomial-time solution to the word problem of the Baumslag group, which has a non-elementary Dehn function. In this work, we examine power circuits and the word problem of the Baumslag group under parallel complexity aspects. In particular, we establish that the word problem of the Baumslag group can be solved in NC - even though one of the essential steps is to compare two integers given by power circuits and this, in general, is shown to be 𝖯-complete. The key observation is that the depth of the occurring power circuits is logarithmic and such power circuits can be compared in NC.

We give lower bounds on the complexity of the word problem of certain non-solvable groups: for a large class of non-solvable infinite groups, including in particular free groups, Grigorchuk’s group and Thompson’s groups, we prove that their word problem is ALOGTIME-hard. For some of these groups (including Grigorchuk’s group and Thompson’s groups) we prove that the circuit value problem (which is equivalent to the circuit evaluation problem) is PSPACE-complete.

Goldmann and Russell (2002) initiated the study of the complexity of the equation satisfiability problem in finite groups by showing that it is in P for nilpotent groups while it is NP-complete for non-solvable groups. Since then, several results have appeared showing that the problem can be solved in polynomial time in certain solvable groups of Fitting length two. In this work, we present the first lower bounds for the equation satisfiability problem in finite solvable groups: under the assumption of the exponential time hypothesis, we show that it cannot be in P for any group of Fitting length at least four and for certain groups of Fitting length three. Moreover, the same hardness result applies to the equation identity problem.

We construct an automaton group with a PSPACE-complete word problem, proving a conjecture due to Steinberg. Additionally, the constructed group has a provably more difficult, namely EXPSPACE-complete, compressed word problem and acts over a binary alphabet. Thus, it is optimal in terms of the alphabet size. Our construction directly simulates the computation of a Turing machine in an automaton group and, therefore, seems to be quite versatile. It combines two ideas: the first one is a construction used by D'Angeli, Rodaro and the first author to obtain an inverse automaton semigroup with a PSPACE-complete word problem and the second one is to utilize a construction used by Barrington to simulate Boolean circuits of bounded degree and logarithmic depth in the group of even permutations over five elements.

Abstract MergeInsertion, also known as the Ford-Johnson algorithm, is a sorting algorithm which, up to today, for many input sizes achieves the best known upper bound on the number of comparisons. Indeed, it gets extremely close to the information-theoretic lower bound. While the worst-case behavior is well understood, only little is known about the average case. This work takes a closer look at the average case behavior. In particular, we establish an upper bound of $n \log n - 1.4005n + o(n)$ n log n − 1.4005 n + o ( n ) comparisons. We also give an exact description of the probability distribution of the length of the chain a given element is inserted into and use it to approximate the average number of comparisons numerically. Moreover, we compute the exact average number of comparisons for n up to 148. Furthermore, we experimentally explore the impact of different decision trees for binary insertion. To conclude, we conduct experiments showing that a slightly different insertion order leads to a better average case and we compare the algorithm to Manacher’s combination of merging and MergeInsertion as well as to the recent combined algorithm with (1,2)-Insertionsort by Iwama and Teruyama.

The two most prominent solutions for the sorting problem are Quicksort and Mergesort. While Quicksort is very fast on average, Mergesort additionally gives worst-case guarantees, but needs extra space for a linear number of elements. Worst-case efficient in-place sorting, however, remains a challenge: the standard solution, Heapsort, suffers from a bad cache behavior and is also not overly fast for in-cache instances. In this work we present median-of-medians QuickMergesort (MoMQuickMergesort), a new variant of QuickMergesort, which combines Quicksort with Mergesort allowing the latter to be implemented in place. Our new variant applies the median-of-medians algorithm for selecting pivots in order to circumvent the quadratic worst case. Indeed, we show that it uses at most n log n + 1.6n comparisons for n large enough. We experimentally confirm the theoretical estimates and show that the new algorithm outperforms Heapsort by far and is only around 10% slower than Introsort (std::sort implementation of stdlibc++), which has a rather poor guarantee for the worst case. We also simulate the worst case, which is only around 10% slower than the average case. In particular, the new algorithm is a natural candidate to replace Heapsort as a worst-case stopper in Introsort.

In this work we introduce a new succinct variant of the word problem in a finitely generated group $G$, which we call the power word problem: the input word may contain powers $p^x$, where $p$ is a finite word over generators of $G$ and $x$ is a binary encoded integer. The power word problem is a restriction of the compressed word problem, where the input word is represented by a straight-line program (i.e., an algebraic circuit over $G$). The main result of the paper states that the power word problem for a finitely generated free group $F$ is AC$^0$-Turing-reducible to the word problem for $F$. Moreover, the following hardness result is shown: For a wreath product $G \wr \mathbb{Z}$, where $G$ is either free of rank at least two or finite non-solvable, the power word problem is complete for coNP. This contrasts with the situation where $G$ is abelian: then the power word problem is shown to be in TC$^0$.

We present an algorithm for the following problem: given a context-free grammar for the word problem of a virtually free group $G$, compute a finite graph of groups $\mathcal{G}$ with finite vertex groups and fundamental group $G$. Our algorithm is non-deterministic and runs in doubly exponential time. It follows that the isomorphism problem of context-free groups can be solved in doubly exponential space. Moreover, if, instead of a grammar, a finite extension of a free group is given as input, the construction of the graph of groups is in NP and, consequently, the isomorphism problem in PSPACE.

Recently, Macdonald et. al. showed that many algorithmic problems for finitely generated nilpotent groups including computation of normal forms, the subgroup membership problem, the conjugacy problem, and computation of subgroup presentations can be done in LOGSPACE. Here we follow their approach and show that all these problems are complete for the uniform circuit class TC^0 - uniformly for all r-generated nilpotent groups of class at most c for fixed r and c. Moreover, if we allow a certain binary representation of the inputs, then the word problem and computation of normal forms is still in uniform TC^0, while all the other problems we examine are shown to be TC^0-Turing reducible to the problem of computing greatest common divisors and expressing them as linear combinations.

Since the work of Kaligosi and Sanders (2006), it is well-known that Quicksort - which is commonly considered as one of the fastest in-place sorting algorithms - suffers in an essential way from branch mispredictions. We present a novel approach to address this problem by partially decoupling control from data flow: in order to perform the partitioning, we split the input in blocks of constant size (we propose 128 data elements); then, all elements in one block are compared with the pivot and the outcomes of the comparisons are stored in a buffer. In a second pass, the respective elements are rearranged. By doing so, we avoid conditional branches based on outcomes of comparisons at all (except for the final Insertionsort). Moreover, we prove that for a static branch predictor the average total number of branch mispredictions is at most epsilon n log n + O(n) for some small epsilon depending on the block size when sorting n elements. Our experimental results are promising: when sorting random integer data, we achieve an increase in speed (number of elements sorted per second) of more than 80% over the GCC implementation of C++ std::sort. Also for many other types of data and non-random inputs, there is still a significant speedup over std::sort. Only in few special cases like sorted or almost sorted inputs, std::sort can beat our implementation. Moreover, even on random input permutations, our implementation is even slightly faster than an implementation of the highly tuned Super Scalar Sample Sort, which uses a linear amount of additional space.

In various occasions the conjugacy problem in finitely generated amalgamated products and HNN extensions can be decided efficiently for elements which cannot be conjugated into the base groups. This observation asks for a bound on how many such elements there are. Such bounds can be derived using the theory of amenable graphs: