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Consider the presentation defined, for an integer $n > 1$, by $$G_{n} = \langle x, y \mid xy^n = y^{n+1}x, yx^{n+1} = x^{n}y\rangle .$$ The group defined by this presentation is trivial. Is it true that the minimum number of cosets that must be defined by the Todd-Coxeter process before any coincidences occur, when run on this presentation over the trivial subgroup, is bounded below by some (at least linear, probably worse) function of $n$, and is such a lower bound known? (In practice, this seems to behave quite badly.)

(A special case of this appears in a recent question, which is what prompted this one.)

Shaun
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James
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    I have never heard of a theorem proving such a lower bound. You get much faster completion with Todd-Coxeter coset enumeration if you enumerate cosets of the subgroup $\langle x \rangle$ rather than the trivial subgroup. It completes very quickly even with $n=100$. – Derek Holt Jun 14 '14 at 19:50
  • @DerekHolt, yes you're right. It does still seem to blow up, though, just much more slowly. But I was mainly curious whether this was one of those examples that was known, or could be shown, to have necessarily bad behaviour. I have an example in my notes of the form $\langle x,y\mid x^ny^{n+1}, x^{n+1}y^{n+2}\rangle$ where it is supposed to require at least $n$ cosets to be defined before any coincidence can occur in Todd-Coxeter. I thought this might be another such. Alas, I did not write down the reference. I thought it might have been your "Handbook", but I could not find it there now. – James Jun 17 '14 at 03:08
  • @DerekHolt. I guess it was obvious what I meant, but I notice that I failed to note that I was referring to an enumeration of the cosets of the trivial subgroup. I've fixed it. – James Jun 17 '14 at 03:10

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