António Malheiro

The cyclic shift graph of a monoid is the graph whose vertices are elements of the monoid and whose edges link elements that differ by a cyclic shift. This paper examines the cyclic shift graphs of `plactic-like' monoids, whose elements can be viewed as combinatorial objects of some type: aside from the plactic monoid itself (the monoid of Young tableaux), examples include the hypoplactic monoid (quasi-ribbon tableaux), the sylvester monoid (binary search trees), the stalactic monoid (stalactic tableaux), the taiga monoid (binary search trees with multiplicities), and the Baxter monoid (pairs of twin binary search trees). It was already known that for many of these monoids, connected components of the cyclic shift graph consist of elements that have the same
evaluation (that is, contain the same number of each generating symbol). This paper focusses on the maximum diameter of a connected component of the cyclic shift graph of these monoids in the rank-$n$ case. For the hypoplactic monoid, this is $n-1$; for the sylvester and taiga monoids, at least $n-1$ and at most $n$; for the stalactic monoid, $3$ (except for ranks $1$ and $2$, when it is respectively $0$ and $1$); for the plactic monoid, at least $n-1$ and at most $2n-3$. The current state of knowledge, including new and previously-known results, is summarized in a table.

This paper shows that every Plactic algebra of finite rank admits a finite Gröbner--Shirshov basis. The result is proved by using the combinatorial properties of Young tableaux to construct a finite complete rewriting system for the corresponding Plactic monoid, which also yields the corollaries that Plactic monoids of finite rank have finite derivation type and satisfy the homological finiteness properties left and right $\mathrm{FP}_\infty$. Also, answering a question of Zelmanov, we apply this rewriting system and other techniques to show that Plactic monoids of finite rank are biautomatic.

This paper considers whether non-trivial identities are satisfied by certain ‘plactic-like’ monoids that, like the plactic monoid, are closely connected with combinatorics. New results show that the hypoplactic, sylvester, Baxter, stalactic, and taiga monoids satisfy identities. The existing state of knowledge is discussed for the plactic and Bell monoids.

This paper constructs presentations via finite complete rewriting systems for plactic monoids of types $A_n$, $B_n$, $C_n$, $D_n$, and $G_2$, using a unified proof strategy that depends on Kashiwara's crystal bases and analogies of Young tableaux, and on Lecouvey's presentations for these monoids. As corollaries, we deduce that plactic monoids of these types have finite derivation type and satisfy the homological finiteness properties left and right $\mathrm{FP}_\infty$. These rewriting systems are then applied to show that plactic monoids of these types are biautomatic.

Kashiwara's crystal graphs have a natural monoid structure that arises by identifying words labelling vertices that appear in the same position of isomorphic components. The celebrated plactic monoid (the monoid of Young tableaux), arises in this way from the crystal graph for the q-analogue of the general linear Lie algebra gln, and the so-called Kashiwara operators interact beautifully with the combinatorics of Young tableaux and with the Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence. The authors previously constructed an analogous ‘quasi-crystal’ structure for the related hypoplactic monoid (the monoid of quasi-ribbon tableaux), which has similarly neat combinatorial properties. This paper constructs an analogous ‘crystal-type’ structure for the sylvester and Baxter monoids (the monoids of binary search trees and pairs of twin binary search trees, respectively). Both monoids are shown to arise from this structure just as the plactic monoid does from the usual crystal graph. The interaction of the structure with the sylvester and Baxter versions of the Robinson–Schensted–Knuth correspondence is studied. The structure is then applied to prove results on the number of factorizations of elements of these monoids, and to prove that both monoids satisfy non-trivial identities.

The action of any group on itself by conjugation and the corresponding conjugacy relation play an important role in group theory. There have been several attempts to extend the notion of conjugacy to semigroups. In this paper, we present a new definition of conjugacy that can be applied to an arbitrary semigroup and it does not reduce to the universal relation in semigroups with a zero. We compare the new notion of conjugacy with existing definitions, characterize the conjugacy in various semigroups of transformations on a set, and count the number of conjugacy classes in these semigroups when the set is infinite.

We prove that given a finite (zero) exact right decomposition (M, T) of a semigroup S, if M is defined by a finite complete presentation, then S is also defined by a finite complete presentation. Exact right decompositions are natural generalizations to semigroups of coset decompositions in groups. As a consequence, we deduce that any Zappa–Szép extension of a monoid defined by a finite complete presentation, by a finite monoid, is also defined by such a presentation.

It is also proved that a semigroup M^0[A; I, J; P], where A and P satisfy some very general conditions, is also defined by a finite complete presentation.

A semigroup is amiable if there is exactly one idempotent in each ℛ*-class and in each ℒ*-class. A semigroup is adequate if it is amiable and if its idempotents commute. We characterize adequate semigroups by showing that they are precisely those amiable semigroups that do not contain isomorphic copies of two particular non-adequate semigroups as subsemigroups.

There have been several attempts to extend the notion of conjugacy from groups to monoids.
The aim of this paper is study the decidability and independence of conjugacy problems
for three of these notions (which we will denote by $\sim_p$, $\sim_o$, and $\sim_c$) in
certain classes of finitely presented monoids. We will show that in the class of polycyclic monoids,
$p$-conjugacy is ``almost'' transitive, $\sim_c$ is strictly included in $\sim_p$, and
the $p$- and $c$-conjugacy problems are decidable with linear compexity.
For other classes of monoids, the situation is more complicated.
We show that there exists a monoid $M$ defined by a finite complete
presentation such that the $c$-conjugacy problem for $M$ is undecidable, and
that for finitely presented monoids, the $c$-conjugacy problem and the word
problem are independent, as are the $c$-conjugacy and $p$-conjugacy problems.

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We exhibit faithful representations of the hypoplactic, stalactic, taiga, sylvester, Baxter and right patience sorting monoids of each finite rank as monoids of upper triangular matrices over any semiring from a large class including the tropical semiring and fields of characteristic 0. By analysing the image of these representations, we show that the variety generated by a single hypoplactic (respectively, stalactic or taiga) monoid of rank at least 2 coincides with the variety generated by the natural numbers together with a fixed finite monoid (respectively, F) and forms a proper subvariety of the variety generated by the plactic monoid of rank 2.