Generalized Small Cancellation Theory

Abstract

We present four generalized small cancellation conditions for finite presentations and solve the word- and conjugacy problem in each case. Our conditions $W$ and $W^*$ contain the non-metric small cancellation cases C(6), C(4)T(4), C(3)T(6) (see [LS]) but are considerably more general. $W$ also contains as a special case the small cancellation condition $W(6)$ of Juhasz [J2]. If a finite presentation satisfies $W$ or $W^*$ then it has a quadratic isoperimetric inequality and therefore solvable word problem. For the class $W$ this was first observed by Gersten in [G7] which also contains an idea of the proof. Our main result here is the proof of the conjugacy problem for the classes $W$ and $W^*$ which uses the geometry of non-positively curved piecewise Euclidean complexes developed by Bridson in [Bri]. The conditions $V$ and $V^*$ generalize the small cancellation conditions C(7), C(5)T(4), C(4)T(5), C(3)T(7). If a finite presentation satisfies the condition $V$ or $V^*$, then it has a linear isoperimetric inequality and hence the group is hyperbolic.