Decision problems for groups and semigroups

The paper presents a detailed survey of results concerning the main decision problems of group theory and semigroup theory, including the word problem, the isomorphism problem, recognition problems, and other algorithmic questions related to them. The well-known theorems of Markov–Post, P. S. Novikov, Adian–Rabin, Higman, Magnus, and Lyndon are given with complete proofs. As a rule, the proofs presented in this survey are substantially simpler than those given in the original papers. For the sake of completeness, we first prove the insolubility of the halting problem for Turing machines, on which the insolubility of the word problem for semigroups is based. Specific attention is also paid to the simplest examples of semigroups with insoluble word problem. We give a detailed proof of the significant result of Lyndon that, in the class of groups presented by a system of defining relations for which the maximum mutual overlapping of any two relators is strictly less than one fifth of their lengths, the word problem is soluble, while insoluble word problems can occur when non-strict inequality is allowed. A proof of the corresponding result for finitely presented semigroups is also given, when the corresponding fraction is one half.