Undecidability of the trace coding problem and some decidable cases

Abstract

We introduce and investigate the notion of weak morphisms of trace monoids with the aim of dealing with the problem of deciding the existence of codings between trace monoids. We prove that this problem is not recursively enumerable, which answers the question raised by Ochmański in 1988. On the other hand, we show its decidability when restricted to instances with domain monoids defined by acyclic dependence graphs. We also partially answer the question of Diekert from 1990 about the number of free monoids needed for encoding a given trace monoid into their direct product.