English

Asynchronous Multi-Tape Automata Intersection: Undecidability and Approximation

Logic in Computer Science 2014-02-14 v5

Abstract

When their reading heads are allowed to move completely asynchronously, finite-state automata with multiple tapes achieve a significant expressive power, but also lose useful closure properties---closure under intersection, in particular. This paper investigates to what extent it is still feasible to use multi-tape automata as recognizer of polyadic predicates on words. On the negative side, determining whether the intersection of asynchronous multi-tape automata is expressible is not even semidecidable. On the positive side, we present an algorithm that computes under-approximations of the intersection; and discuss simple conditions under which it can construct complete intersections. A prototype implementation and a few non-trivial examples demonstrate the algorithm in practice.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.4860,
  title  = {Asynchronous Multi-Tape Automata Intersection: Undecidability and Approximation},
  author = {Carlo A. Furia},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.4860},
  year   = {2014}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:23:16.928Z