Freeness of Multiplicative Matrix Semigroups

A ug 2 00 8 On the decidability of semigroup freeness ∗

This paper deals with the decidability of semigroup freeness. More precisely, the freeness problem over a semigroup S is defined as: given a finite subset X ⊆ S, decide whether each element of S has at most one factorization over X. To date, the decidabilities of two freeness problems have been closely examined. In 1953, Sardinas and Patterson proposed a now famous algorithm for the freeness pr...

On the decidability of semigroup freeness

This paper deals with the decidability of semigroup freeness. More precisely, the freeness problem over a semigroup S is defined as: given a finite subset X ⊆ S, decide whether each element of S has at most one factorization over X. To date, the decidabilities of two freeness problems have been closely examined. In 1953, Sardinas and Patterson proposed a now famous algorithm for the freeness pr...

The freeness problem over matrix semigroups and bounded languages

We study the freeness problem for matrix semigroups. We show that the freeness problem is decidable for upper-triangular 2 × 2 matrices with rational entries when the products are restricted to certain bounded languages. We also show that this problem becomes undecidable for sufficiently large matrices.

Scalar Ambiguity and Freeness in Matrix Semigroups over Bounded Languages

There has been much research into freeness properties of finitely generated matrix semigroups under various constraints, mainly related to the dimensions of the generator matrices and the semiring over which the matrices are defined. A recent paper has also investigated freeness properties of matrices within a bounded language of matrices, which are of the form M1M2 · · ·Mk ⊆ Fn×n for some semi...

On the Decidability of the Freeness of Matrix Semigroups