Related papers: Modifying the upper bound on the length of minimal…
We consider the problem {\sc Max Sync Set} of finding a maximum synchronizing set of states in a given automaton. We show that the decision version of this problem is PSPACE-complete and investigate the approximability of {\sc Max Sync Set}…
It has been proven that, when normalized by $n$, the expected length of a longest common subsequence of $d$ random strings of length $n$ over an alphabet of size $\sigma$ converges to some constant that depends only on $d$ and $\sigma$.…
We show that every regular language defines a unique nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA), which we call "\'atomaton", whose states are the "atoms" of the language, that is, non-empty intersections of complemented or uncomplemented left…
The single shortest path algorithm is undefined for weighted finite-state automata over non-idempotent semirings because such semirings do not guarantee the existence of a shortest path. However, in non-idempotent semirings admitting an…
We study a variant of the synchronization game on finite deterministic automata. In this game, Alice chooses one input letter of an automaton $A$ on each of her moves while Bob may respond with an arbitrary finite word over the input…
We present several infinite series of synchronizing automata for which the minimum length of reset words is close to the square of the number of states. All these automata are tightly related to primitive digraphs with large exponent.
The \v{C}ern\'y conjecture (\v{C}ern\'y, 1964) states that each n-state \san\ possess a \sw\ of length $(n-1)^2$. From the other side the best upper bound for the \rl\ of n-state \sa\ known so far is equal to $\frac{n^3-n}6$ (Pin, 1983) and…
For a finite state automaton, a synchronizing sequence is an input sequence that takes all the states to the same state. Checking the existence of a synchronizing sequence and finding a synchronizing sequence, if one exists, can be…
The infimal prefix-closed, controllable and observable superlanguage plays an essential role in the relationship between controllability, observability and co-observability -- the central notions of supervisory control theory. Existing…
We exhibit the construction of a deterministic automaton that, given k > 0, recognizes the (regular) language of k-differentiable words. Our approach follows a scheme of Crochemore et al. based on minimal forbidden words. We extend this…
Wheeler nondeterministic finite automata (WNFAs) were introduced as a generalization of prefix sorting from strings to labeled graphs. WNFAs admit optimal solutions to classic hard problems on labeled graphs and languages. The problem of…
The largest known reset thresholds for DFAs are equal to $(n-1)^2$, where $n$ is the number of states. This is conjectured to be the maximum possible. PFAs (with partial transition function) can have exponentially large reset thresholds.…
A finite deterministic (semi)automaton $\mathcal{A} =(Q,\Sigma,\delta)$ is $k$-compressible if there is some word $w\in \Sigma^+$ such that the image of its state set $Q$ under the natural action of $w$ is reduced by at least $k$ states.…
In the constrained synchronization problem we ask if a given automaton admits a synchronizing word coming from a fixed regular constraint language. We show that intersecting a given constraint language with an ideal language decreases the…
Co-lex partial orders were recently introduced in (Cotumaccio et al., SODA 2021 and JACM 2023) as a powerful tool to index finite state automata, with applications to regular expression matching. They generalize Wheeler orders (Gagie et…
We use a semigroup-theoretic construction by Peter Higgins in order to produce, for each even $n$, an $n$-state and 3-letter synchronizing automaton with the following two features: 1) all its input letters act as idempotent selfmaps of…
A constant weight binary code consists of $n$-bit binary codewords, each with exactly $w$ bits equal to 1, such that any two codewords are at least Hamming distance $d$ apart. $A(n,d,w)$ is the maximum size of a constant weight binary code…
Analogous to regular string and tree languages, regular languages of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are defined in the literature. Although called regular, those DAG-languages are more powerful and, consequently, standard problems have a…
The state complexity of a Deterministic Finite-state automaton (DFA) is the number of states in its minimal equivalent DFA. We study the state complexity of random $n$-state DFAs over a $k$-symbol alphabet, drawn uniformly from the set…
Let $NFA_b(q)$ denote the set of languages accepted by nondeterministic finite automata with $q$ states over an alphabet with $b$ letters. Let $B_n$ denote the set of words of length $n$. We give a quadratic lower bound on the VC dimension…