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In this work we introduce a new succinct variant of the word problem in a finitely generated group G, which we call the power word problem: the input word may contain powers p^x, where p is a finite word over generators of G and x is a binary encoded integer. The power word problem is a restriction of the compressed word problem, where the input word is represented by a straight-line program (i.e., an algebraic circuit over G). The main result of the paper states that the power word problem for a finitely generated free group F is AC^0-Turing-reducible to the word problem for F. Moreover, the following hardness result is shown: For a wreath product G Wr Z, where G is either free of rank at least two or finite non-solvable, the power word problem is complete for coNP. This contrasts with the situation where G is abelian: then the power word problem is shown to be in TC^0.
@InProceedings{lohrey_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2019.43,
author = {Lohrey, Markus and Wei{\ss}, Armin},
title = {{The Power Word Problem}},
booktitle = {44th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2019)},
pages = {43:1--43:15},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-117-7},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2019},
volume = {138},
editor = {Rossmanith, Peter and Heggernes, Pinar and Katoen, Joost-Pieter},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2019.43},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-109871},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2019.43},
annote = {Keywords: word problem, compressed word problem, free groups}
}