Hairdressing in groups: a survey of combings and formal languages

Sarah Rees

Keywords

combings, formal languages, fellow travellers, automatic groups

Status

Published (in book form and electronically in) Geometry and Topology Monographs 1 (1998), The Epstein Birthday Schrift, paper no. 24, pages 491-507

Abstract

A group is combable if it can be represented by a language of words satisfying a fellow traveller property; an automatic group has a synchronous combing which is a regular language. This article surveys results for combable groups, in particular in the case where the combing is a formal language. \

The preprint is available as gzipped dvi (24 kB) and postscript (84 kB) files.

Alternatively, you can request a copy by e-mailing me.

Sarah Rees
14 August 1998.