Formal Languages and Automata Theory
We realize constant-space quantum computation by measure-many two-way quantum finite automata and evaluate their language recognition power by analyzing patterns of their exotic behaviors and by exploring their structural properties. In…
We introduce and study a complexity function on words $c_x(n),$ called \emph{cyclic complexity}, which counts the number of conjugacy classes of factors of length $n$ of an infinite word $x.$ We extend the well-known Morse-Hedlund theorem…
Hankel matrices (aka connection matrices) of word functions and graph parameters have wide applications in automata theory, graph theory, and machine learning. We give a characterization of real-valued functions on nested words recognized…
We consider decidability problems associated with Engel's identity ($[\cdots[[x,y],y],\dots,y]=1$ for a long enough commutator sequence) in groups generated by an automaton. We give a partial algorithm that decides, given $x,y$, whether an…
A language $L$ over an alphabet $\Sigma$ is prefix-convex if, for any words $x,y,z\in\Sigma^*$, whenever $x$ and $xyz$ are in $L$, then so is $xy$. Prefix-convex languages include right-ideal, prefix-closed, and prefix-free languages. We…
We introduce a general class of distances (metrics) between Markov chains, which are based on linear behaviour. This class encompasses distances given topologically (such as the total variation distance or trace distance) as well as by…
We study the computational complexity of reachability, coverability and inclusion for extensions of context-free commutative grammars with integer counters and reset operations on them. Those grammars can alternatively be viewed as an…
In [A. Frid, S. Puzynina, L.Q. Zamboni, \textit{On palindromic factorization of words}, Adv. in Appl. Math. 50 (2013), 737-748], it was conjectured that any infinite word whose palindromic lengths of factors are bounded is ultimately…
We show that the equivalence of deterministic linear top-down tree-to-word transducers is decidable in polynomial time. Linear tree-to-word transducers are non-copying but not necessarily order-preserving and can be used to express XML and…
While weighted automata provide a natural framework to express quantitative properties, many basic properties like average response time cannot be expressed with weighted automata. Nested weighted automata extend weighted automata and…
I study the state complexity of binary operations on regular languages over different alphabets. It is well known that if $L'_m$ and $L_n$ are languages restricted to be over the same alphabet, with $m$ and $n$ quotients, respectively, the…
Context-free games are two-player rewriting games that are played on nested strings representing XML documents with embedded function symbols. These games were introduced to model rewriting processes for intensional documents in the Active…
Regular string-to-string functions enjoy a nice triple characterization through deterministic two-way transducers (2DFT), streaming string transducers (SST) and MSO definable functions. This result has recently been lifted to FO definable…
We prove a converse to Myhill's "Garden-of-Eden" theorem and obtain in this manner a characterization of amenability in terms of cellular automata: "A group $G$ is amenable if and only if every cellular automaton with carrier $G$ that has…
We introduce a quantum-like classical computational model, called affine computation, as a generalization of probabilistic computation. After giving the basics of affine computation, we define affine finite automata (AfA) and compare it…
Automata-logic connections are pillars of the theory of regular languages. Such connections are harder to obtain for transducers, but important results have been obtained recently for word-to-word transformations, showing that the three…
For a given regular language of infinite trees, one can ask about the minimal number of priorities needed to recognize this language with a non-deterministic, alternating, or weak alternating parity automaton. These questions are known as,…
The non-overlapping sets of pictures are sets such that no two pictures in the set (properly) overlap. They are the generalization to two dimensions of the cross-bifix-free sets of strings. Non-overlapping sets of pictures are…
For a language $L$, we consider its cyclic closure, and more generally the language $C^k(L)$, which consists of all words obtained by partitioning words from $L$ into $k$ factors and permuting them. We prove that the classes of ET0L and…
The article defines and studies the genus of finite state deterministic automata (FSA) and regular languages. Indeed, a FSA can be seen as a graph for which the notion of genus arises. At the same time, a FSA has a semantics via its…