Certifying the Decidability of the Word Problem in Monoids at Large

While the word problem for monoids is undecidable in general, having a decision procedure for some finitely presented monoid of interest has numerous applications. This paper presents a toolbox for the Rocq proof assistant that can be used to verify the decidability of the word problem for a given monoid and, in some cases, to produce the corresponding decision procedure. As this verification can be computationally intensive, the toolbox heavily relies on proofs by reflection guided by an external oracle. This approach has been successfully used on several large presentations from the literature, as well as on a database of one million 1-relation monoids. The huge size of this database forced some unusual considerations onto the Rocq formalization, so that the formal proofs could be checked in a reasonable amount of time.

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Published
2026-01-08
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3779031.3779101
Primary Topic
Logic, programming, and type systems
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Certifying the Decidability of the Word Problem in Monoids at Large

Finn Smith, Reinis Cirpons, Guillaume Melquiond, A. Mahboubi
Logic, programming, and type systems
article

Certifying the Decidability of the Word Problem in Monoids at Large

Finn Smith, Reinis Cirpons, Guillaume Melquiond, A. Mahboubi
article en

Abstract

While the word problem for monoids is undecidable in general, having a decision procedure for some finitely presented monoid of interest has numerous applications. This paper presents a toolbox for the Rocq proof assistant that can be used to verify the decidability of the word problem for a given monoid and, in some cases, to produce the corresponding decision procedure. As this verification can be computationally intensive, the toolbox heavily relies on proofs by reflection guided by an external oracle. This approach has been successfully used on several large presentations from the literature, as well as on a database of one million 1-relation monoids. The huge size of this database forced some unusual considerations onto the Rocq formalization, so that the formal proofs could be checked in a reasonable amount of time.

École Centrale de Nantes (FR), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), University of St Andrews (GB), Université Paris-Saclay (FR), Laboratoire des Sciences du Numérique de Nantes (FR), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL)
European Commission
Peace, Justice and strong institutions
Openalex Percentile: Top 93%
Logic, programming, and type systems
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Certifying the Decidability of the Word Problem in Monoids at Large — Finn Smith, Reinis Cirpons, et al. · (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS