English

Pushdown and Lempel-Ziv Depth

Computational Complexity 2022-01-20 v3 Formal Languages and Automata Theory

Abstract

This paper expands upon existing and introduces new formulations of Bennett's logical depth. In previously published work by Jordon and Moser, notions of finite-state depth and pushdown depth were examined and compared. These were based on finite-state transducers and information lossless pushdown compressors respectively. Unfortunately a full separation between the two notions was not established. This paper introduces a new formulation of pushdown depth based unary-stack pushdown compressors. This improved formulation allows us to do a full comparison by demonstrating the existence of sequences with high finite-state depth and low pushdown depth, and vice-versa. A new notion based on the Lempel-Ziv 78 algorithm is also introduced. Its difference from finite-state depth is shown by demonstrating the existence of a Lempel-Ziv deep sequence that is not finite-state deep and vice versa. Lempel-Ziv depth's difference from pushdown depth is shown by building sequences that have a pushdown depth level of roughly 1/21/2 but low Lempel-Ziv depth, and a sequence with high Lempel-Ziv depth but low pushdown depth. Properties of all three notions are also discussed and proved.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2009.04821,
  title  = {Pushdown and Lempel-Ziv Depth},
  author = {Liam Jordon and Philippe Moser},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.04821},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Definition of Pushdown Depth (Def 4.1) changed to remove the ambiguity in the old definition. Proofs have been altered from the previous version to reflect this change, but the results have remined the same

R2 v1 2026-06-23T18:26:34.522Z