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Deciding in an efficient way weak probabilistic bisimulation in the context of Probabilistic Automata is an open problem for about a decade. In this work we close this problem by proposing a procedure that checks in polynomial time the…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2012-07-17 Holger Hermanns , Andrea Turrini

We propose a new abstract formalism for probabilistic timed systems, Parametric Interval Probabilistic Timed Automata, based on an extension of Parametric Timed Automata and Interval Markov Chains. In this context, we consider the…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2019-06-13 Étienne André , Benoît Delahaye , Paulin Fournier

We describe the Amber tool for proving and refuting the termination of a class of probabilistic while-programs with polynomial arithmetic, in a fully automated manner. Amber combines martingale theory with properties of asymptotic bounding…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-07-29 Marcel Moosbrugger , Ezio Bartocci , Joost-Pieter Katoen , Laura Kovács

In this paper, we investigate the probabilistic formal verification of stochastic dynamical systems over continuous state spaces. Motivated by problems in state estimation and information-flow security, we introduce the notion of…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-04-07 Bohan Cui , Jianing Zhao , Yu Chen , Alessandro Abate , Marta Kwiatkowska , Xiang Yin

We study the termination problem for nondeterministic recursive probabilistic programs. First, we show that a ranking-supermartingales-based approach is both sound and complete for bounded terminiation (i.e., bounded expected termination…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-01-12 Krishnendu Chatterjee , Hongfei Fu

This paper develops an assume-guarantee (AG) framework for the compositional verification of probabilistic automata (PAs) with uncertain transition probabilities. We study parametric probabilistic automata (pPAs), where probabilities are…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-04-01 Hannah Mertens , Tim Quatmann , Joost-Pieter Katoen

The article surveys some decidability results for DPDAs on infinite words (omega-DPDA). We summarize some recent results on the decidability of the regularity and the equivalence problem for the class of weak omega-DPDAs. Furthermore, we…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2014-05-23 Christof Löding

We consider a class of partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) with uncertain transition and/or observation probabilities. The uncertainty takes the form of probability intervals. Such uncertain POMDPs can be used, for…

Systems and Control · Computer Science 2018-07-12 Mohamadreza Ahmadi , Murat Cubuktepe , Nils Jansen , Ufuk Topcu

We introduce the class of P-finite automata. These are a generalisation of weighted automata, in which the weights of transitions can depend polynomially on the length of the input word. P-finite automata can also be viewed as simple…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-10-24 Alex Buna-Marginean , Vincent Cheval , Mahsa Shirmohammadi , James Worrell

In this communication, we resolve a longstanding open question in the probabilistic verification of infinite-state systems. We show that model checking {\it stateless probabilistic pushdown systems (pBPA)} against {\it probabilistic…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-07-02 Deren Lin , Tianrong Lin

We study the expressiveness and succinctness of history-deterministic pushdown automata (HD-PDA) over finite words, that is, pushdown automata whose nondeterminism can be resolved based on the run constructed so far, but independently of…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2024-08-07 Shibashis Guha , Ismaël Jecker , Karoliina Lehtinen , Martin Zimmermann

Probability Quantification (PQ) predictions of the efficacy of safety-critical protective systems is challenging. Yet, the popularity of PQ methodologies (e.g., Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA), Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) and…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-03-10 Martin Wortman , Ernest Kee , Pranav Kannan

This paper presents a new static analysis for deriving upper bounds on the expected resource consumption of probabilistic programs. The analysis is fully automatic and derives symbolic bounds that are multivariate polynomials of the inputs.…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-11-27 Van Chan Ngo , Quentin Carbonneaux , Jan Hoffmann

Pushdown Systems (PDSs) are a natural model for sequential programs with (recursive) procedure calls. In this work, we define the Branching temporal logic of CAlls and RETurns (BCARET) that allows to write branching temporal formulas while…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2018-05-15 Huu-Vu Nguyen , Tayssir Touili

In safety-critical applications that rely on the solution of an optimization problem, the certification of the optimization algorithm is of vital importance. Certification and suboptimality results are available for a wide range of…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-12-06 Pablo Krupa , Omar Inverso , Mirco Tribastone , Alberto Bemporad

We present for the first time a supermartingale certificate for $\omega$-regular specifications. We leverage the Robbins & Siegmund convergence theorem to characterize supermartingale certificates for the almost-sure acceptance of Streett…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2024-05-28 Alessandro Abate , Mirco Giacobbe , Diptarko Roy

We present a data-driven approach to the quantitative verification of probabilistic programs and stochastic dynamical models. Our approach leverages neural networks to compute tight and sound bounds for the probability that a stochastic…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-04-22 Alessandro Abate , Alec Edwards , Mirco Giacobbe , Hashan Punchihewa , Diptarko Roy

An important question for a probabilistic program is whether the probability mass of all its diverging runs is zero, that is that it terminates "almost surely". Proving that can be hard, and this paper presents a new method for doing so; it…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2017-12-27 Annabelle McIver , Carroll Morgan , Benjamin Lucien Kaminski , Joost-Pieter Katoen

Automated theorem provers (ATPs) can disprove conjectures by saturating a set of clauses, but the resulting saturated sets are opaque certificates. In the unit equational fragment, a saturated set can in fact be read as a convergent rewrite…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-02-19 Mikoláš Janota , Michael Rawson , Stephan Schulz

Pushdown systems (PDS) are known as an abstract model of recursive programs, and model checking methods for PDS have been studied. Register PDS (RPDS) are PDS augmented by registers to deal with data values from an infinite domain in a…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2022-09-14 Yoshiaki Takata , Ryoma Senda , Hiroyuki Seki