Related papers: A Sharper Upper Bound for the Separating Words Pro…
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.…
We use results from communication complexity, both new and old ones, to prove lower bounds for unambiguous finite automata (UFAs). We show three results. $\textit{Complement:}$ There is a language $L$ recognised by an $n$-state UFA such…
An automaton is unambiguous if for every input it has at most one accepting computation. An automaton is k-ambiguous (for k > 0) if for every input it has at most k accepting computations. An automaton is boundedly ambiguous if it is…
Deterministic 2-head finite automata which are machines that process an input word from both ends are analyzed for their ability to perform reversible computations. This implies that the automata are backward deterministic, enabling unique…
Counter automata are more powerful versions of finite-state automata where addition and subtraction operations are permitted on a set of n integer registers, called counters. We show that the word problem of $\Z^n$ is accepted by a…
A word is called a reset word for a deterministic finite automaton if it maps all the states of the automaton to a unique state. Deciding about the existence of a reset word of a given maximum length for a given automaton is known to be an…
The ambiguity of a nondeterministic finite automaton (NFA) N for input size n is the maximal number of accepting computations of N for an input of size n. For all k, r 2 N we construct languages Lr,k which can be recognized by NFA's with…
We show that for any unambiguous finite automaton with $n$ states there exists an unambiguous finite automaton with $\sqrt{n+1} \cdot 2^{n/2}$ states that recognizes the complement language. This builds and improves upon a similar result by…
This paper establishes a lower bound on the number of states necessary in the worst case to simulate an $n$-state two-way nondeterministic finite automaton (2NFA) by a one-way unambiguous finite automaton (UFA). It is proved that for every…
We show that deterministic finite automata equipped with $k$ two-way heads are equivalent to deterministic machines with a single two-way input head and $k-1$ linearly bounded counters if the accepted language is strictly bounded, i.e., a…
We consider decision problems for relations over finite and infinite words defined by finite automata. We prove that the equivalence problem for binary deterministic rational relations over infinite words is undecidable in contrast to the…
A non-deterministic recursion scheme recognizes a language of finite trees. This very expressive model can simulate, among others, higher-order pushdown automata with collapse. We show decidability of the diagonal problem for schemes. This…
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…
The simulation of deterministic pushdown automata defined over a one-letter alphabet by finite state automata is investigated from a descriptional complexity point of view. We show that each unary deterministic pushdown automaton of size s…
A word $w$ is called synchronizing (recurrent, reset, magic, directable) word of deterministic finite automaton (DFA) if $w$ sends all states of the automaton to a unique state. In 1964 Jan \v{C}erny found a sequence of n-state complete DFA…
For fast computation of the Arnold complexity of length $2^{n}$ binary words we obtain an upper bound for the Shannon function $Sh(n)$
We investigate the quantifier alternation hierarchy in first-order logic on finite words. Levels in this hierarchy are defined by counting the number of quantifier alternations in formulas. We prove that one can decide membership of a…
In a recent article by Chapuy and Perarnau, it was shown that a uniformly chosen automaton on $n$ states with a $2$-letter alphabet has a synchronizing word of length $O(\sqrt{n}\log n)$ with high probability. In this note, we improve this…
This paper studies the complexity of languages of finite words using automata theory. To go beyond the class of regular languages, we consider infinite automata and the notion of state complexity defined by Karp. Motivated by the seminal…
We show that a special case of the Feferman-Vaught composition theorem gives rise to a natural notion of automata for finite words over an infinite alphabet, with good closure and decidability properties, as well as several logical…