The submonoid and rational subset membership problems for Artin groups

Abstract

We demonstrate that the submonoid membership problem and the rational subset membership problem are equivalent in Artin groups. Both these problem are undecidable in a given Artin group if and only if the group embeds the right-angled Artin groups of rank 4 over a path or a square; and this can be characterized using only the defining graph of the Artin group. These results generalize the ones by Lohrey - Steinberg for right-angled Artin groups. Moreover, both these decision problems are decidable for a given Artin group if and only if the group is subgroup separable. This equivalence for right-angled Artin groups is provided by Lohrey - Steinberg and Metaftsis - Raptis. The equivalence for general Artin groups comes from some observations here and the characterization of separable Artin groups by Almeida - Lima.