Related papers: Co-lexicographically Ordering Automata and Regular…
We show that for any $i > 0$, it is decidable, given a regular language, whether it is expressible in the $\Sigma_i[<]$ fragment of first-order logic FO[<]. This settles a question open since 1971. Our main technical result relies on the…
In the Intersection Non-Emptiness problem, we are given a list of finite automata $A_1,A_2,\dots,A_m$ over a common alphabet $\Sigma$ as input, and the goal is to determine whether some string $w\in \Sigma^*$ lies in the intersection of the…
We study extremal and algorithmic questions of subset and careful synchronization in monotonic automata. We show that several synchronization problems that are hard in general automata can be solved in polynomial time in monotonic automata,…
The problem DFA-Intersection-Nonemptiness asks if a given number of deterministic automata accept a common word. In general, this problem is PSPACE-complete. Here, we investigate this problem for the subclasses of commutative automata and…
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 study the efficient approximability of basic graph and logic problems in the literature when instances are specified hierarchically as in \cite{Le89} or are specified by 1-dimensional finite narrow periodic specifications as in…
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…
We consider two natural problems about nondeterministic finite automata. First, given such an automaton M of n states, and a length l, does M accept a word of length l? We show that the classic problem of triangle-free graph recognition…
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…
In this paper, we study the fundamental open question of finding the optimal high-order algorithm for solving smooth convex minimization problems. Arjevani et al. (2019) established the lower bound $\Omega\left(\epsilon^{-2/(3p+1)}\right)$…
Given a partially-ordered finite alphabet $\Sigma$ and a language $L\subseteq \Sigma^*$, how large can an antichain in $L$ be (where $L$ is given the lexicographic ordering)? More precisely, since $L$ will in general be infinite, we should…
The arithmetical hierarchy (AH) is similar to the polynomial hierarchy (PH). Unlike the PH, the AH does not collapse relative to any oracle. A language in the (k + 1)-st level of the AH is computable enumerable (c.e.) relative to the kth…
Families of DFAs (FDFAs) have recently been introduced as a new representation of $\omega$-regular languages. They target ultimately periodic words, with acceptors revolving around accepting some representation $u\cdot v^\omega$. 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,…
We introduce layered automata, a subclass of alternating parity automata that generalises deterministic automata. Assuming a consistency property, these automata are history deterministic and 0-1 probabilistic. We show that every…
In this paper we examine decision problems associated with various classes of convex languages, studied by Ang and Brzozowski (under the name "continuous languages"). We show that we can decide whether a given language L is prefix-,…
We provide the first fully polynomial-time randomized approximation scheme for the following two counting problems: 1. Given a Context Free Grammar $G$ over alphabet $\Sigma$, count the number of words of length exactly $n$ generated by…
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…
An attractive mechanism to specify global constraints in rostering and other domains is via formal languages. For instance, the Regular and Grammar constraints specify constraints in terms of the languages accepted by an automaton and a…
We propose a new extension of higher-order pushdown automata, which allows to use an infinite alphabet. The new automata recognize languages of data words (instead of normal words), which beside each its letter from a finite alphabet have a…