Decision problems for inverse monoids presented by a single sparse relator

We study a class of inverse monoids of the form M=Inv 〈X∣w=1〉, where the single relator w has a combinatorial property that we call sparse. For a sparse word w, we prove that the word problem for M is decidable. We also show that the set of words in (X∪X ⁻¹)^* that represent the identity in M is a deterministic context free language, and that the set of geodesics in the Schützenberger graph of the identity of M is a regular language.