Certifying the Decidability of the Word Problem in Monoids at Large

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Authors: Reinis Cirpons, Florent Hivert, Assia Mahboubi, Guillaume Melquiond, James D. Mitchell, Finn Smith
Cited by: 0
References: 32

Abstract

While the word problem for monoids is undecidable in general, having a decision procedure for some finitely presented monoid of interest has numerous applications. This paper presents a toolbox for the Rocq proof assistant that can be used to verify the decidability of the word problem for a given monoid and, in some cases, to produce the corresponding decision procedure. As this verification can be computationally intensive, the toolbox heavily relies on proofs by reflection guided by an external oracle. This approach has been successfully used on several large presentations from the literature, as well as on a database of one million 1-relation monoids. The huge size of this database forced some unusual considerations onto the Rocq formalization, so that the formal proofs could be checked in a reasonable amount of time.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Logic programming and type systems semigroups and automata theory Formal Methods in Verification

Publication details

Pages
128–142
Publication date
8 January 2026
Language
EN