Groups with ALOGTIME-hard word problems and PSPACE-complete compressed word problems

Abstract

We give lower bounds on the complexity of the word problem of certain non-solvable groups: for a large class of non-solvable infinite groups, including in particular free groups, Grigorchuk's group and Thompson's groups, we prove that their word problem is ${\mathsf{NC}}^1$-hard. For some of these groups (including Grigorchuk's group and Thompson's groups) we prove that the compressed word problem (which is equivalent to the circuit evaluation problem) is $\mathsf{PSPACE}$-complete.

A short version of the paper will appear in the Proceedings of the Computational Complexity Conference 2020