Word problems and embedding-obstructions in cellular automata groups on groups

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1. Verfasser: Salo, Ville
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Salo, Ville
author_facet Salo, Ville
contents We study groups of reversible cellular automata, or CA groups, on groups. More generally, we consider automorphism groups of subshifts of finite type on groups. It is known that word problems of CA groups on virtually nilpotent groups are in co-NP, and can be co-NP-hard. We show that under the Gap Conjecture of Grigorchuk, their word problems are PSPACE-hard on all other groups. On free and surface groups, we show that they are indeed always in PSPACE. On a group with co-NEXPTIME word problem, CA groups themselves have co-NEXPTIME word problem, and on the lamplighter group (which itself has polynomial-time word problem) we show they can be co-NEXPTIME-hard. We show also nonembeddability results: the group of cellular automata on a non-cyclic free group does not embed in the group of cellular automata on the integers (this solves a question of Barbieri, Carrasco-Vargas and Rivera-Burgos); and the group of cellular automata in dimension $D$ does not embed in a group of cellular automata in dimension $d$ if $D > d$ (this solves a question of Hochman).
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_05572
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Word problems and embedding-obstructions in cellular automata groups on groups
Salo, Ville
Group Theory
Computational Complexity
Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Dynamical Systems
We study groups of reversible cellular automata, or CA groups, on groups. More generally, we consider automorphism groups of subshifts of finite type on groups. It is known that word problems of CA groups on virtually nilpotent groups are in co-NP, and can be co-NP-hard. We show that under the Gap Conjecture of Grigorchuk, their word problems are PSPACE-hard on all other groups. On free and surface groups, we show that they are indeed always in PSPACE. On a group with co-NEXPTIME word problem, CA groups themselves have co-NEXPTIME word problem, and on the lamplighter group (which itself has polynomial-time word problem) we show they can be co-NEXPTIME-hard. We show also nonembeddability results: the group of cellular automata on a non-cyclic free group does not embed in the group of cellular automata on the integers (this solves a question of Barbieri, Carrasco-Vargas and Rivera-Burgos); and the group of cellular automata in dimension $D$ does not embed in a group of cellular automata in dimension $d$ if $D > d$ (this solves a question of Hochman).
title Word problems and embedding-obstructions in cellular automata groups on groups
topic Group Theory
Computational Complexity
Formal Languages and Automata Theory
Dynamical Systems
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05572