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A new test for asphericity and diagrammatic reducibility of group presentations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2019

Jonathan Ariel Barmak
Affiliation:
Departamento de Matemática–IMAS FCEyN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina ([email protected]; [email protected])
Elias Gabriel Minian
Affiliation:
Departamento de Matemática–IMAS FCEyN, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina ([email protected]; [email protected])

Abstract

We present a new test for studying asphericity and diagrammatic reducibility of group presentations. Our test can be applied to prove diagrammatic reducibility in cases where the classical weight test fails. We use this criterion to generalize results of J. Howie and S.M. Gersten on asphericity of LOTs and of Adian presentations, and derive new results on solvability of equations over groups. We also use our methods to investigate a conjecture of S.V. Ivanov related to Kaplansky's problem on zero divisors: we strengthen Ivanov's result for locally indicable groups and prove a weak version of the conjecture.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 2019

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