Testing epimorphism onto the bicyclic monoid is $\mathsf{NP}$-complete

Abstract

We prove that deciding whether there is a surjective homomorphism from an arbitrary finitely presented inverse monoid onto the bicyclic monoid is $\mathsf{NP}$-complete. As part of the proof, we show that an extension of existential Presburger arithmetic which involves greatest common divisors on $n$ arguments is in $\mathsf{NP}$, extending a recent result of Défossez, Haase, Mansutti, and Pérez (SODA 2024).

arXiv comment17 pages, 1 figure. Comment about OpenAI result added