English

Minimising the Probabilistic Bisimilarity Distance

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2024-07-01 v1 Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

A labelled Markov decision process (MDP) is a labelled Markov chain with nondeterminism; i.e., together with a strategy a labelled MDP induces a labelled Markov chain. The model is related to interval Markov chains. Motivated by applications to the verification of probabilistic noninterference in security, we study problems of minimising probabilistic bisimilarity distances of labelled MDPs, in particular, whether there exist strategies such that the probabilistic bisimilarity distance between the induced labelled Markov chains is less than a given rational number, both for memoryless strategies and general strategies. We show that the distance minimisation problem is ExTh(R)-complete for memoryless strategies and undecidable for general strategies. We also study the computational complexity of the qualitative problem about making the distance less than one. This problem is known to be NP-complete for memoryless strategies. We show that it is EXPTIME-complete for general strategies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2406.19830,
  title  = {Minimising the Probabilistic Bisimilarity Distance},
  author = {Stefan Kiefer and Qiyi Tang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.19830},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

36 pages, 7 figures, CONCUR 2024

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:22:29.713Z