We establish a one-to-one correspondence between a class of Garside groups
admitting a certain presentation and the structure groups of non-degenerate,
involutive and braided set-theoretical solutions of the quantum Yang-Baxter
equation. We also characterize indecomposable solutions in terms of
$\Delta$-pure Garside groups.
We present an algorithmic approach to the conjugacy problems in monoids and
semigroups, using rewriting systems. There is a class of monoids and semigroups
that satisfy the condition that the transposi- tion problem and the left and
right conjugacy problem are equivalent. The free monoid and the completely
simple semigroups belong to this class. We give a solution to the conjugacy
problem for monoids and semigroups in this class that are presented by a
complete rewriting system that satisfies some additional conditions.