Regular languages for contracting geodesics

Let (Formula presented.) be a finitely generated group. We show that for any finite symmetric generating set (Formula presented.), the language consisting of all geodesics in Cay (Formula presented.) with the contracting property is a regular language. An immediate consequence is that the existence of an infinite contracting geodesic in a Cayley graph of a finitely generated group implies the existence of a contracting element. In particular, torsion groups cannot contain an infinite contracting geodesic. As an application, this implies that any finitely generated group containing an infinite contracting geodesic must be either virtually (Formula presented.) or acylindrically hyperbolic.