Unconditional Time and Space Complexity Lower Bounds for Intersection Non-Emptiness
Abstract
We reinvestigate known lower bounds for the Intersection Non-Emptiness Problem for Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA's). We first strengthen conditional time complexity lower bounds from T. Kasai and S. Iwata (1985) which showed that Intersection Non-Emptiness is not solvable more efficiently unless there exist more efficient algorithms for non-deterministic logarithmic space (). Next, we apply a recent breakthrough from R. Williams (2025) on the space efficient simulation of deterministic time to show an unconditional time complexity lower bound for Intersection Non-Emptiness. Finally, we consider implications that would follow if Intersection Non-Emptiness for a fixed number of DFA's is computationally hard for a fixed polynomial time complexity class. These implications include for some and .
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.00297,
title = {Unconditional Time and Space Complexity Lower Bounds for Intersection Non-Emptiness},
author = {Michael Wehar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.00297},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
13 pages, draft