The Intersection Problem for Finite Semigroups

The intersection problem for finite semigroups asks, given a set of regular languages, represented by recognizing morphisms to finite semigroups, whether there exists a word contained in their intersection. In previous work, it was shown that is problem is [Formula: see text]-complete. We introduce compressibility measures as a useful tool to classify the complexity of the intersection problem for certain classes of finite semigroups. Using this framework, we obtain a new and simple proof that for groups and for commutative semigroups, the problem (as well as the variant where the languages are represented by finite automata) is contained in [Formula: see text]. We uncover certain structural and non-structural properties determining the complexity of the intersection problem for varieties of semigroups containing only trivial submonoids. More specifically, we prove [Formula: see text]-hardness for classes of semigroups having a property called unbounded order and for the class of all nilpotent semigroups of bounded order. On the contrary, we show that bounded order and commutativity imply decidability in poly-logarithmic time on alternating random-access Turing machines with a single alternation. We also establish connections to the monoid variant of the problem.