ON COMPUTING GEODESICS IN BAUMSLAG–SOLITAR GROUPS

Abstract

We introduce the peak normal form for elements of the Baumslag–Solitar groups BS(p,q). This normal form is very close to the length-lexicographical normal form, but more symmetric. Both normal forms are geodesic. This means the normal form of an element u-1v yields the shortest path between u and v in the Cayley graph. For horocyclic elements the peak normal form and the length-lexicographical normal form coincide. The main result of this paper is that we can compute the peak normal form in polynomial time if p divides q. As consequence we can compute geodesic lengths in this case. In particular, this gives a partial answer to Question 1 in [4] For arbitrary p and q it is possible to compute the peak normal form (length-lexicographical normal form resp.) also the for elements in the horocyclic subgroup and, more generally, for elements which we call hills. This approach leads to a linear time reduction of the problem of computing geodesics to the problem of computing geodesics for Britton-reduced words where the t-sequence starts with t-1 and ends with t.