Standard bases for shift-stable groups and Subgroup Membership in wreath products

Abstract

We develop a notion of standard bases for subgroups of the restricted direct product $G^{(\mathbb{N}^n)}$ that are stable under translation by $\mathbb{N}^n$, where $G$ is an arbitrary finite group. We construct an algorithm that computes standard bases for such subgroups and use them to solve several algorithmic problems, including membership, saturation, and variable elimination. Our approach is inspired by Buchberger's algorithm and the theory of Gröbner bases for ideals in polynomial rings. Building on the standard bases and our solutions to the algorithmic problems above, we prove that Subgroup Membership is decidable in wreath products $G \wr \mathbb{Z}^n$ for finite $G$ and $n \in \mathbb{N}$.