English

Synchronizing Data Words for Register Automata

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2019-06-11 v2

Abstract

Register automata (RAs) are finite automata extended with a finite set of registers to store and compare data from an infinite domain. We study the concept of synchronizing data words in RAs: does there exist a data word that sends all states of the RA to a single state? For deterministic RAs with k registers (k-DRAs), we prove that inputting data words with 2k+1 distinct data from the infinite data domain is sufficient to synchronize. We show that the synchronization problem for DRAs is in general PSPACE-complete, and it is NLOGSPACE-complete for 1-DRAs. For nondeterministic RAs (NRAs), we show that Ackermann(n) distinct data (where n is the size of the RA) might be necessary to synchronize. The synchronization problem for NRAs is in general undecidable, however, we establish Ackermann-completeness of the problem for 1-NRAs. Another main result is the NEXPTIME-completeness of the length-bounded synchronization problem for NRAs, where a bound on the length of the synchronizing data word, written in binary, is given. A variant of this last construction allows to prove that the length-bounded universality problem for NRAs is co-NEXPTIME-complete.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.02329,
  title  = {Synchronizing Data Words for Register Automata},
  author = {Karin Quaas and Mahsa Shirmohammadi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.02329},
  year   = {2019}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:05:29.741Z