English

From Decidability to Undecidability by Considering Regular Sets of Instances

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2020-07-17 v2

Abstract

We are lifting classical problems from single instances to regular sets of instances. The task of finding a positive instance of the combinatorial problem PP in a potentially infinite given regular set is equivalent to the so called intreg-problem of PP, which asks for a given DFA AA, whether the intersection of PP with L(A)L(A) is non-empty. The intreg-problem generalizes the idea of considering multiple instances at once and connects classical combinatorial problems with the field of automata theory. While the question of the decidability of the intreg-problem has been answered positively for several NP- and even PSPACE-complete problems, we are presenting natural problems even from L with an undecidable intreg-problem. We also discuss alphabet sizes and different encoding-schemes elaborating the boundary between problem-variants with a decidable respectively undecidable intreg-problem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1906.08027,
  title  = {From Decidability to Undecidability by Considering Regular Sets of Instances},
  author = {Petra Wolf},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.08027},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T09:57:52.265Z