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For general input automata, there exist regular constraint languages such that asking if a given input automaton admits a synchronizing word in the constraint language is PSPACE-complete or NP-complete. Here, we investigate this problem for…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2021-09-08 Stefan Hoffmann

A word w is called synchronizing (recurrent, reset, directed) word of a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) if w sends all states of the automaton on a unique state. Jan Cerny had found in 1964 a sequence of n-state complete DFA with…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2007-09-11 A. N. Trahtman

We present an infinite series of $n$-state Eulerian automata whose reset words have length at least $(n^2-3)/2$. This improves the current lower bound on the length of shortest reset words in Eulerian automata. We conjecture that…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2016-08-04 Marek Szykuła , Vojtěch Vorel

It has been known since the 60's that any complete discrete $n$-state automaton admits a reset word of length not exceeding $\alpha n^3+o(n^3)$ for some absolute constant $\alpha$. J.-E. Pin and P. Frankl proved this statement with…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2019-01-23 Yaroslav Shitov

Synchronizing words in classical automata theory provide a mechanism to reset any state of a deterministic automaton to a specific target state via a carefully chosen finite sequence of transition rules. In this work, we extend the concept…

Cerny's conjecture is a longstanding open problem in automata theory. We study two different concepts, which allow to approach it from a new angle. The first one is the triple rendezvous time, i.e., the length of the shortest word mapping…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2015-12-21 François Gonze , Raphaël M. Jungers

In this paper we address the question of synchronizing random automata in the critical settings of almost-group automata. Group automata are automata where all letters act as permutations on the set of states, and they are not synchronizing…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2018-05-08 Mikhail V. Berlinkov , Cyril Nicaud

Every language recognized by a non-deterministic finite automaton can be recognized by a deterministic automaton, at the cost of a potential increase of the number of states, which in the worst case can go from $n$ states to $2^n$ states.…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-05 Arnaud Carayol , Philippe Duchon , Florent Koechlin , Cyril Nicaud

The question if a deterministic finite automaton admits a software reset in the form of a so-called synchronizing word can be answered in polynomial time. In this paper, we extend this algorithmic question to deterministic automata beyond…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2020-12-23 Henning Fernau , Petra Wolf , Tomoyuki Yamakami

A word w of letters on edges of underlying graph Gamma of deterministic finite automaton (DFA) is called the synchronizing word if w sends all states of the automaton to a unique state. J. Cerny discovered in 1964 a sequence of n-state…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2021-07-20 A. N. Trahtman

We survey results in the literature that establish the \v{C}ern\'y conjecture for various classes of finite automata. We also list classes for which the conjecture remains open, but a quadratic (in the number of states) upper bound on the…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2026-01-14 Mikhail V. Volkov

We improve the best known upper bound on the length of the shortest reset words of synchronizing automata. The new bound is slightly better than $114 n^3 / 685 + O(n^2)$. The \v{C}ern\'y conjecture states that $(n-1)^2$ is an upper bound.…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2018-04-02 Marek Szykuła

Consider a complete communication network of $n$ nodes, where the nodes receive a common clock pulse. We study the synchronous $c$-counting problem: given any starting state and up to $f$ faulty nodes with arbitrary behaviour, the task is…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2015-03-24 Christoph Lenzen , Joel Rybicki , Jukka Suomela

This paper considers the existence of short synchronizing words in deterministic finite automata (DFAs). We define two general strategies for generating synchronizing words, and we show that each of these strategies can be applied if and…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2025-08-22 Peter Bradshaw , Alexander Clow , Ladislav Stacho

We introduce a quantum analogue of a classical synchronizing automaton. In classical case the state of a system evolves according to a set of rules forming an alphabet, and sequences of these rules, called words, govern its evolution.…

In this paper we present a new fast algorithm finding minimal reset words for finite synchronizing automata. The problem is know to be computationally hard, and our algorithm is exponential. Yet, it is faster than the algorithms used so far…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2014-12-15 Andrzej Kisielewicz , Jakub Kowalski , Marek Szykuła

The \v{C}ern\'y conjecture states that every $n$-state synchronizing automaton has a reset word of length at most $(n-1)^2$. We study the hardness of finding short reset words. It is known that the exact version of the problem, i.e.,…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2015-06-10 Pawel Gawrychowski , Damian Straszak

We characterize complete deterministic finite automata with two input letters in which every non-empty set of states occurs as the image of the whole state set under the action of a suitable input word. The characterization leads to a…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2022-08-23 David Casas , Mikhail V. Volkov

Consider a complete communication network of $n$ nodes, where the nodes receive a common clock pulse. We study the synchronous $c$-counting problem: given any starting state and up to $f$ faulty nodes with arbitrary behaviour, the task is…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2019-12-24 Christoph Lenzen , Joel Rybicki , Jukka Suomela

In a one-counter automaton (OCA), one can produce a letter from some finite alphabet, increment and decrement the counter by one, or compare it with constants up to some threshold. It is well-known that universality and language inclusion…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2016-07-20 Benedikt Bollig