Proving a group trivial made easy: A case study in coset enumeration

Abstract

Coset enumeration, based on the methods described by Todd and Coxeter, is one of the basic tools for investigating finitely presented groups. The process is not well understood, and various pathological presentations of, for example, the trivial group have been suggested as challenge problems. Here we consider one such family of presentations proposed by B.H. Neumann. We show that the problems are much easier than they first appear, albeit at the expense of considerable preliminary ‘experimentation’. This demonstrates how far the range of applicability of coset enumeration has improved.