Related papers: Ambiguity and Communication
We answer two open questions by (Gruber, Holzer, Kutrib, 2009) on the state-complexity of representing sub- or superword closures of context-free grammars (CFGs): (1) We prove a (tight) upper bound of $2^{\mathcal{O}(n)}$ on the size of…
Probabilistic automata are an extension of nondeterministic finite automata in which transitions are annotated with probabilities. Despite its simplicity, this model is very expressive and many of the associated algorithmic questions are…
Affine finite automata (AfA) can be more succinct than probabilistic and quantum finite automata when recognizing some regular languages with bounded-error. In this paper, we improve previously known constructions given for the succinctness…
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…
We show that the Parikh image of the language of an NFA with n states over an alphabet of size k can be described as a finite union of linear sets with at most k generators and total size 2^{O(k^2 log n)}, i.e., polynomial for all fixed k…
In coding and information theory, it is desirable to construct maximal codes that can be either variable length codes or error control codes of fixed length. However deciding code maximality boils down to deciding whether a given NFA is…
One of the properties of Kondacs-Watrous model of quantum finite automata (QFA) is that the probability of the correct answer for a QFA cannot be amplified arbitrarily. In this paper, we determine the maximum probabilities achieved by QFAs…
We examine questions involving nondeterministic finite automata where all states are final, initial, or both initial and final. First, we prove hardness results for the nonuniversality and inequivalence problems for these NFAs. Next, we…
We prove that two-way probabilistic and quantum finite automata (2PFA's and 2QFA's) can be considerably more concise than both their one-way versions (1PFA's and 1QFA's), and two-way nondeterministic finite automata (2NFA's). For this…
Nonuniform families of polynomial-size finite automata, which are series of indexed finite automata having polynomially many inner states, are used in the past literature to solve nonuniform families of promise decision problems. Among such…
The problem of k-minimisation for a DFA M is the computation of a smallest DFA N (where the size |M| of a DFA M is the size of the domain of the transition function) such that their recognized languages differ only on words of length less…
Grammatical inference consists in learning a language or a grammar from data. In this paper, we consider a number of models for inferring a non-deterministic finite automaton (NFA) with 3 sorts of states, that must accept some words, and…
We investigate the magic number problem, that is, the question whether there exists a minimal n-state nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) whose equivalent minimal deterministic finite automaton (DFA) has alpha states, for all n and…
In this paper, we present a proof of the NP-completeness of computing the smallest Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA) that distinguishes two given regular languages as DFAs. A distinguishing DFA is an automaton that recognizes a language…
This paper presents efficient algorithms for testing the finite, polynomial, and exponential ambiguity of finite automata with $\epsilon$-transitions. It gives an algorithm for testing the exponential ambiguity of an automaton $A$ in time…
Partially ordered nondeterminsitic finite automata (poNFAs) are NFAs whose transition relation induces a partial order on states, that is, for which cycles occur only in the form of self-loops on a single state. A poNFA is universal if it…
Exclusive nondeterministic finite automata (XNFA) are nondeterministic finite automata with a special acceptance condition. An input is accepted if there is exactly one accepting path in its computation tree. If there are none or more than…
Reversible forms of computations are often interesting from an energy efficiency point of view. When the computation device in question is an automaton, it is known that the minimal reversible automaton recognizing a given language is not…
We define a new subclass of nondeterministic finite automata for prefix-closed languages called Flanked Finite Automata (FFA). We show that this class enjoys good complexity properties while preserving the succinctness of nondeterministic…
An automaton is partially ordered if the only cycles in its transition diagram are self-loops. The expressivity of partially ordered NFAs (poNFAs) can be characterized by the Straubing-Th\'erien hierarchy. Level 3/2 is recognized by poNFAs,…