Conjugacy languages and conjugacy growth relative to subsets of groups

Abstract

In this paper, we explore conjugacy languages when the base problem is the generalized conjugacy problem (with constraints): given $g\in G$ and $U\subset G$, does $g$ have a conjugate in $U$ (with conjugators in a certain subset)? To do so, for subsets $U,V\subseteq G$, we define the corresponding languages $\text{ConjGeo(U,V)}$, $\text{CycGeo(U)}$, $\text{ConjSL(U)}$ and $\text{ConjMinLenSL(U,V)}$, following the previously studied cases where $U=V=G$. Our results cover several classes of groups: for free groups, we prove that $\text{ConjGeo(U,V)}$ and $\text{ConjMinLenSL(U,V)}$ are regular if $U$ and $V$ are rational subsets; for hyperbolic groups, we show that if $L$ is a regular language of geodesics and $U$ is the subsets represented by it, then $\text{ConjGeo(U)}$ and $\text{ConjMinLenSL(U)}$ are regular; for virtually cyclic groups, we show that $\text{ConjSL(U)}$ is regular if $U$ is rational; and, for virtually abelian groups, we prove that $\text{ConjGeo(U)}$ belongs to a certain class of languages $\C$ when the language of words representing elements of $U$ also belongs to $\C$. We also define relative conjugacy growth and show that its behavior can be heavily dependent on the choice of subset.