Related papers: A Sharper Upper Bound for the Separating Words Pro…

Traditionally, finite automata theory has been used as a framework for the representation of possibly infinite sets of strings. In this work, we introduce the notion of second-order finite automata, a formalism that combines finite automata…

A language is dense if the set of all infixes (or subwords) of the language is the set of all words. Here, it is shown that it is decidable whether the language accepted by a nondeterministic Turing machine with a one-way read-only input…

For a complexity function $C$, the lower and upper $C$-complexity rates of an infinite word $\mathbf{x}$ are \[ \underline{C}(\mathbf x)=\liminf_{n\to\infty} \frac{C(\mathbf{x}\upharpoonright n)}n,\quad \overline{C}(\mathbf…

The projected language of a general deterministic automaton with $n$ states is recognizable by a deterministic automaton with $2^{n-1} + 2^{n-m} - 1$ states, where $m$ denotes the number of states incident to unobservable non-loop…

The dot-depth hierarchy of Brzozowski and Cohen classifies the star-free languages of finite words. By a theorem of McNaughton and Papert, these are also the first-order definable languages. The dot-depth rose to prominence following the…

We present a few classes of synchronizing automata exhibiting certain extremal properties with regard to synchronization. The first is a series of automata with subsets whose shortest extending words are of length $\varTheta(n^2)$, where…

The study of word equations (or the existential theory of equations over free monoids) is a central topic in mathematics and theoretical computer science. The problem of deciding whether a given word equation has a solution was shown to be…

This paper presents efficient algorithms for testing the finite, polynomial, and exponential ambiguity of finite automata with $\epsilon$-transitions. It gives an algorithm for testing the exponential ambiguity of an automaton $A$ in time…

Automata provide a decision procedure for Presburger arithmetic. However, until now only crude lower and upper bounds were known on the sizes of the automata produced by this approach. In this paper, we prove an upper bound on the the…

Consider $ A^* $, the free monoid generated by the finite alphabet $A$ with the concatenation operation. Two words have the same commutative image when one is a permutation of the symbols of the other. The commutative closure of a set $ L…

We obtain upper bounds on the number of finite sets $\mathcal S$ of primes below a given bound for which various $2$ variable $\mathcal S$-unit equations have a solution.

Automata over infinite words, also known as omega-automata, play a key role in the verification and synthesis of reactive systems. The spectrum of omega-automata is defined by two characteristics: the acceptance condition (e.g. B\"uchi or…

The deterministic membership problem for timed automata asks whether the timed language recognised by a nondeterministic timed automaton can be recognised by a deterministic timed automaton. We show that the problem is decidable when the…

We consider fragments of first-order logic and as models we allow finite and infinite words simultaneously. The only binary relations apart from equality are order comparison < and the successor predicate +1. We give characterizations of…

We show that, in an alphabet of $n$ symbols, the number of words of length $n$ whose number of different symbols is away from $(1-1/e)n$, which is the value expected by the Poisson distribution, has exponential decay in $n$. We use…

We give a new proof of a result from well quasi-order theory on the computability of bases for upwards-closed sets of words. This new proof is based on Angluin's L* algorithm, that learns an automaton from a minimally adequate teacher. This…

We describe a uniform construction for converting $\omega$-automata with arbitrary acceptance conditions (based on the notion of infinity sets i.e. the set of states visited infinitely often in a run of the automaton) to equivalent…

In combinatorics on words, a word w of length n over an alphabet of size q is said to be privileged if n <= 1 or if n >= 2 and w has a privileged border that occurs exactly twice in w. Forsyth, Jayakumar and Shallit proved that there exist…

The regular languages with a neutral letter expressible in first-order logic with one alternation are characterized. Specifically, it is shown that if an arbitrary $\Sigma_2$ formula defines a regular language with a neutral letter, then…

We introduce the problem of temporal coverability for realizability and synthesis. Namely, given a language of words that must be covered by a produced system, how to automatically produce such a system. We consider the case of coverability…