Formal Languages and Automata Theory
We show that the minimization of visibly pushdown automata is NP-complete. This result is obtained by introducing immersions, that recognize multiple languages (over a usual, non-visible alphabet) using a common deterministic transition…
The probabilistic bisimilarity distance of Deng et al. has been proposed as a robust quantitative generalization of Segala and Lynch's probabilistic bisimilarity for probabilistic automata. In this paper, we present a characterization of…
In reactive synthesis, the goal is to automatically generate an implementation from a specification of the reactive and non-terminating input/output behaviours of a system. Specifications are usually modelled as logical formulae or automata…
We introduce MSO graph storage types, and call a storage type MSO-expressible if it is isomorphic to some MSO graph storage type. An MSO graph storage type has MSO-definable sets of graphs as storage configurations and as storage…
We introduce a new class of Parametric Timed Automata (PTAs) where we allow clocks to be compared to parameters in guards, as in classic PTAs, but also to be updated to parameters. We focus here on the EF-emptiness problem: "is the set of…
We consider numerical functions weakly computable by grammar-controlled vector addition systems (GVASes, a variant of pushdown Petri nets). GVASes can weakly compute all fast growing functions $F_\alpha$ for $\alpha<\omega^\omega$, hence…
It is known that 2-state binary and 3-state unary probabilistic finite automata and 2-state unary quantum finite automata recognize uncountably many languages with cutpoints. These results have been obtained by associating each recognized…
A morphic word is obtained by iterating a morphism to generate an infinite word, and then applying a coding. We characterize morphic words with polynomial growth in terms of a new type of infinite word called a $\textit{zigzag word}$. A…
The complexity of parity games is a long standing open problem that saw a major breakthrough in 2017 when two quasi-polynomial algorithms were published. This article presents a third, independent approach to solving parity games in…
This work is a contribution to the study of rewrite games. Positions are finite words, and the possible moves are defined by a finite number of local rewriting rules. We introduce and investigate taking-and-merging games, that is, where…
The dot-depth hierarchy of Brzozowski and Cohen classifies the star-free languages of finite words. By a theorem of McNaughton and Papert, these are also the first-order definable languages. The dot-depth rose to prominence following the…
The notion of comparison between system runs is fundamental in formal verification. This concept is implicitly present in the verification of qualitative systems, and is more pronounced in the verification of quantitative systems. In this…
We introduce a measure called width, quantifying the amount of nondeterminism in automata. Width generalises the notion of good-for-games (GFG) automata, that correspond to NFAs of width 1, and where an accepting run can be built on-the-fly…
In this paper, we extend the notion of Lyndon word to transfinite words. We prove two main results. We first show that, given a transfinite word, there exists a unique factorization in Lyndon words that are densely non-increasing, a…
We introduce a class of algebras that can be used as recognisers for regular tree languages. We show that it is the only such class that forms a pseudo-variety and we prove the existence of syntactic algebras. Finally, we give a more…
Pomset automata are an operational model of weak bi-Kleene algebra, which describes programs that can fork an execution into parallel threads, upon completion of which execution can join to resume as a single thread. We characterize a…
We introduce a new setting where a population of agents, each modelled by a finite-state system, are controlled uniformly: the controller applies the same action to every agent. The framework is largely inspired by the control of a…
A monster is an automaton in which every function from states to states is represented by at least one letter. A modifier is a set of functions allowing one to transform a set of automata into one automaton. We revisit some language…
In this article we provide effective characterisations of regular languages of infinite trees that belong to the low levels of the Wadge hierarchy. More precisely we prove decidability for each of the finite levels of the hierarchy; for the…
$\omega$-clones are multi-sorted structures that naturally emerge as algebras for infinite trees, just as $\omega$-semigroups are convenient algebras for infinite words. In the algebraic theory of languages, one hopes that a language is…