We establish a general criterion for the finite presentability of subdirect products of groups and use this to characterize finitely presented residually free groups. We prove that, for all n ∈ N, a residually free group is of type FPn if and only if it is of type Fn. New families of subdirect products of free groups are constructed, including the first examples of finitely presented subgroups ...

This paper introduces the topological finiteness condition finite derivation type (FDT) on the class of semigroups. This notion is naturally extended from the monoid case. With this new concept we are able to prove that if a Rees matrix semigroupM[S; I, J ;P ] has FDT then the semigroup S also has FDT. Given a monoid S and a finitely presented Rees matrix semigroup M[S; I, J ;P ] we prove that ...

The five-element Brandt semigroup B2 and its four-element subsemigroup B0, obtained by omitting one nonidempotent, have played key roles in the study of varieties of semigroups. Regarded in that fashion, they have long been known to be finitely based. The semigroup B2 carries the natural structure of an inverse semigroup. Regarded as such, in the signature {·,−1 }, it is also finitely based. It...

We study the complexity of computation in finitely generated free left, right and two-sided adequate semigroups and monoids. We present polynomial time (quadratic in the RAM model of computation) algorithms to solve the word problem and compute normal forms in each of these, and hence also to test whether any given identity holds in the classes of left, right and/or two-sided adequate semigroups.

We begin with a brief introduction to the theory of word hyperbolic groups. We then consider four possible conditions which might reasonably be used as definitions or partial definitions of hyperbolicity in semigroups: having a hyperbolic Cayley graph; having hyperbolic Schützenberger graphs; having a context-free multiplication table; or having word hyperbolic maximal subgroups. Our main resul...

Last years a number of papers were devoted to describing automorphisms of semigroups of endomorphisms of free finitely generated universal algebras of some varieties: groups, semigroups, associative commutative algebras, inverse semigroups, modules, Lie algebras and some others (see references). All these researches were inspired by the questions prof. B. Plotkin set in connection with so calle...

We consider implicit signatures over finite semigroups determined by sets of pseudonatural numbers. We prove that, under relatively simple hypotheses on a pseudovariety V of semigroups, the finitely generated free algebra for the largest such signature is closed under taking factors within the free pro-V semigroup on the same set of generators. Furthermore, we show that the natural analogue of ...

In this paper, we exhibit an infinite basis of ω-identities for the ω-variety generated by the pseudovariety LSl, of semigroups which are locally semilattices, and we show that this ω-variety is not finitely based.