scholarly journals Synchronizing series-parallel deterministic finite automata with loops and related problems

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Jens Bruchertseifer ◽  
Henning Fernau

We study the problem DFA-SW of determining if a given deterministic finite automaton A possesses a synchronizing word of length at most k for automata whose (multi-)graphs are TTSPL, i.e., series-parallel, plus allowing some self-loops. While DFA-SW remains NP-complete on TTSPL automata, we also find (further) restrictions with efficient (parameterized) algorithms. We also study the (parameterized) complexity of related problems, for instance, extension variants of the synchronizing word problem, or the problem of finding smallest alphabet-induced synchronizable sub-automata.

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (05) ◽  
pp. 503-522
Author(s):  
Holger Bock Axelsen ◽  
Markus Holzer ◽  
Martin Kutrib

Recently, a method to decide the NL-complete problem of whether the language accepted by a given deterministic finite automaton (DFA) can also be accepted by some reversible deterministic finite automaton (REV-DFA) has been derived. Here, we show that the corresponding problem for nondeterministic finite automata (NFA) is PSPACE-complete. The recent DFA method essentially works by minimizing the DFA and inspecting it for a forbidden pattern. We here study the degree of irreversibility for a regular language, the minimal number of such forbidden patterns necessary in any DFA accepting the language, and show that the degree induces a strict infinite hierarchy of language families. We examine how the degree of irreversibility behaves under the usual language operations union, intersection, complement, concatenation, and Kleene star, showing tight bounds (some asymptotically) on the degree.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (04) ◽  
pp. 527-538
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Madejski ◽  
Andrzej Szepietowski

Two-dimensional general row jumping finite automata were recently introduced as an interesting computational model for accepting two-dimensional languages. These automata are nondeterministic. They guess an order in which rows of the input array are read and they jump to the next row only after reading all symbols in the previous row. In each row, they choose, also nondeterministically, an order in which segments of the row are read. In this paper, we study the membership problem for these automata. We show that each general row jumping finite automaton can be simulated by a nondeterministic Turing machine with space bounded by the logarithm. This means that the fixed membership problems for such automata are in NL, and so in P. On the other hand, we show that the uniform membership problem is NP-complete.


2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (05) ◽  
pp. 1027-1038 ◽  
Author(s):  
LYNETTE VAN ZIJL

Iwama et al. showed that there exists an n-state binary nondeterministic finite automaton such that its equivalent minimal deterministic finite automaton has exactly 2n - α states, for all n ≥ 7 and 5 ≤ α ≤ 2n-2, subject to certain coprimality conditions. We investigate the same question for both unary and binary symmetric difference nondeterministic finite automata. In the binary case, we show that for any n ≥ 4, there is an n-state symmetric difference nondeterministic finite automaton for which the equivalent minimal deterministic finite automaton has 2n - 1 + 2k - 1 - 1 states, for 2 < k ≤ n - 1. In the unary case, we consider a large practical subclass of unary symmetric difference nondeterministic finite automata: for all n ≥ 2, we argue that there are many values of α such that there is no n-state unary symmetric difference nondeterministic finite automaton with an equivalent minimal deterministic finite automaton with 2n - α states, where 0 < α < 2n - 1. For each n ≥ 2, we quantify such values of α precisely.


2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (06) ◽  
pp. 1407-1416 ◽  
Author(s):  
KAI SALOMAA ◽  
PAUL SCHOFIELD

It is known that the neighborhood of a regular language with respect to an additive distance is regular. We introduce an additive weighted finite automaton model that provides a conceptually simple way to reprove this result. We consider the state complexity of converting additive weighted finite automata to deterministic finite automata. As our main result we establish a tight upper bound for the state complexity of the conversion.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (06n07) ◽  
pp. 1117-1134
Author(s):  
Galina Jirásková ◽  
Ivana Krajňáková

We investigate the state complexity of the square operation on languages represented by deterministic, alternating, and Boolean automata. For each [Formula: see text] such that [Formula: see text], we describe a binary language accepted by an [Formula: see text]-state deterministic finite automaton with [Formula: see text] final states meeting the upper bound [Formula: see text] on the state complexity of its square. We show that in the case of [Formula: see text], the corresponding upper bound cannot be met. Using the binary deterministic witness for square with [Formula: see text] states where half of them are final, we get the tight upper bounds [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] on the complexity of the square operation on alternating and Boolean automata, respectively.


2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (03) ◽  
pp. 617-631 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOZEF JIRÁSEK ◽  
GALINA JIRÁSKOVÁ ◽  
ALEXANDER SZABARI

We show that for all integers n and α such that n ⩽ α ⩽ 2n, there exists a minimal nondeterministic finite automaton of n states with a four-letter input alphabet whose equivalent minimal deterministic finite automaton has exactly α states. It follows that in the case of a four-letter alphabet, there are no "magic numbers", i.e., the holes in the hierarchy. This improves a similar result obtained by Geffert for a growing alphabet of size n + 2.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (02) ◽  
pp. 161-185
Author(s):  
Markus Holzer ◽  
Sebastian Jakobi

We compare deterministic finite automata (DFAs) and biautomata under the following two aspects: structural similarities between minimal and hyper-minimal automata, and computational complexity of the minimization and hyper-minimization problem. Concerning classical minimality, the known results such as isomorphism between minimal DFAs, and NL-completeness of the DFA minimization problem carry over to the biautomaton case. But surprisingly this is not the case for hyper-minimization: the similarity between almost-equivalent hyper-minimal biautomata is not as strong as it is between almost-equivalent hyper-minimal DFAs. Moreover, while hyper-minimization is NL-complete for DFAs, we prove that this problem turns out to be computationally intractable, i.e., NP-complete, for biautomata.


2007 ◽  
Vol Vol. 9 no. 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. N. Trahtman

International audience A word w is called a synchronizing (recurrent, reset, directable) word of a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) if w brings all states of the automaton to some specific state; a DFA that has a synchronizing word is said to be synchronizable. Cerny conjectured in 1964 that every n-state synchronizable DFA possesses a synchronizing word of length at most (n-1)2. We consider automata with aperiodic transition monoid (such automata are called aperiodic). We show that every synchronizable n-state aperiodic DFA has a synchronizing word of length at most n(n-1)/2. Thus, for aperiodic automata as well as for automata accepting only star-free languages, the Cerny conjecture holds true.


10.37236/5616 ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henk Don

A deterministic finite automaton is synchronizing if there exists a word that sends all states of the automaton to the same state. Černý conjectured in 1964 that a synchronizing automaton with $n$ states has a synchronizing word of length at most $(n-1)^2$. We introduce the notion of aperiodically 1-contracting automata and prove that in these automata all subsets of the state set are reachable, so that in particular they are synchronizing. Furthermore, we give a sufficient condition under which the Černý conjecture holds for aperiodically 1-contracting automata. As a special case, we prove some results for circular automata.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (05) ◽  
pp. 483-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksandrs Belovs ◽  
J. Andres Montoya ◽  
Abuzer Yakaryılmaz

It is one of the most famous open problems to determine the minimum amount of states required by a deterministic finite automaton to distinguish a pair of strings, which was stated by Christian Choffrut more than thirty years ago. We investigate the same question for different automata models and we obtain new upper and lower bounds for some of them including alternating, ultrametric, quantum, and affine finite automata.


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