Friedl and Löh (2021, Confl. Math.) prove that testing whether or not there is an epimorphism from a finitely presented group to a virtually cyclic group, or to the direct product of an abelian and a finite group, is decidable. Here we prove that these problems are $\mathsf{NP}$-complete. We also show that testing epimorphism is $\mathsf{NP}$-complete when the target is a restricted type of semi-direct product of a finitely generated free abelian group and a finite group, thus extending the class of virtually abelian target groups for which decidability of epimorphism is known. Lastly, we consider epimorphism onto a fixed finite group. We show the problem is $\mathsf{NP}$-complete when the target is a dihedral groups of order that is not a power of 2, complementing the work on Kuperberg and Samperton (2018, Geom. Topol.) who showed the same result when the target is non-abelian finite simple.

Abstract. The minimal faithful permutation degree [Formula: see text] of a finite group [Formula: see text] is the smallest integer [Formula: see text] for which there is an injective homomorphism [Formula: see text] from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text]. The main result of this paper is a randomized polynomial-time algorithm for computing the minimal faithful permutation degree groups without abelian normal subgroups. Additionally, we show that: 1. For any primitive permutation group [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] can be computed in quasi-polynomial time. 2. For a group [Formula: see text] given by its Cayley table, [Formula: see text] can be computed in [Formula: see text].

In this work, we show that verifying the order of a finite group given as a black-box is in the complexity class QCMA. This solves an open problem asked by Watrous in 2000 in his seminal paper on quantum proofs and directly implies that the Group Non-Membership problem is also in the class QCMA, which further proves a conjecture proposed by Aaronson and Kuperberg in 2006. Our techniques also give improved quantum upper bounds on the complexity of many other group-theoretical problems, such as group isomorphism in black-box groups.

Cayley’s theorem says that every finite group G can be viewed as a subgroup of a symmetric group Sm for some integer m. The minimal faithful permutation degree µ(G) of a finite group G is the smallest integer m such that there is an injective homomorphism φ from G to Sm. The main result of this paper is a randomized polynomial time algorithm for computing the minimal faithful permutation degree of semisimple permutation groups. Semisimple groups are groups without any abelian normal subgroups. Apart from this, we show that: 1. For any primitive permutation group G, µ(G) can be computed in quasi-polynomial time. 2. Given a permutation group G and an integer k, the problem of deciding if µ(G) ≤ k is in NP. 3. For a group G given by its Cayley table, µ(G) can be computed in DSPACE(log3 |G|).

For any fixed positive integer r and a given budget k, the r-Eigenvalue Vertex Deletion (r-EVD) problem asks if a graph G admits a subset S of at most k vertices such that the adjacency matrix of G⧵S has at most r distinct eigenvalues. The edge deletion, edge addition, and edge editing variants are defined analogously. For r = 1, r-EVD is equivalent to the Vertex Cover problem. For r = 2, it turns out that r-EVD amounts to removing a subset S of at most k vertices so that G⧵ S is a cluster graph where all connected components have the same size. We show that r-EVD is NP-complete even on bipartite graphs with maximum degree four for every fixed r > 2, and FPT when parameterized by the solution size and the maximum degree of the graph. We also establish several results for the special case when r = 2. For the vertex deletion variant, we show that 2-EVD is NP-complete even on triangle-free and 3d-regular graphs for any d ≥ 2, and also NP-complete on d-regular graphs for any d ≥ 8. The edge deletion, addition, and editing variants are all NP-complete for r = 2. The edge deletion problem admits a polynomial time algorithm if the input is a cluster graph, while - in contrast - the edge addition variant is hard even when the input is a cluster graph. We show that the edge addition variant has a quadratic kernel. The edge deletion and vertex deletion variants admit a single-exponential FPT algorithm when parameterized by the solution size alone. Our main contribution is to develop the complexity landscape for the problem of modifying a graph with the aim of reducing the number of distinct eigenvalues in the spectrum of its adjacency matrix. It turns out that this captures, apart from Vertex Cover, also a natural variation of the problem of modifying to a cluster graph as a special case, which we believe may be of independent interest.

A finite group of order n can be represented by its Cayley table. In the word-RAM model the Cayley table of a group of order n can be stored using O(n²) words and can be used to answer a multiplication query in constant time. It is interesting to ask if we can design a data structure to store a group of order n that uses o(n²) space but can still answer a multiplication query in constant time. We design a constant query-time data structure that can store any finite group using O(n) words where n is the order of the group. Farzan and Munro (ISSAC 2006) gave an information theoretic lower bound of Ω(n) on the number of words to store a group of order n. Since our data structure achieves this lower bound and answers queries in constant time, it is optimal in both space usage and query-time. A crucial step in the process is essentially to design linear space and constant query-time data structures for nonabelian simple groups. The data structures for nonableian simple groups are designed using a lemma that we prove using the Classification Theorem for Finite Simple Groups (CFSG).