English

Unconditional Time and Space Complexity Lower Bounds for Intersection Non-Emptiness

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2026-03-24 v2

Abstract

We reinvestigate known lower bounds for the Intersection Non-Emptiness Problem for Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA's). We first strengthen conditional time complexity lower bounds from T. Kasai and S. Iwata (1985) which showed that Intersection Non-Emptiness is not solvable more efficiently unless there exist more efficient algorithms for non-deterministic logarithmic space (NL\texttt{NL}). Next, we apply a recent breakthrough from R. Williams (2025) on the space efficient simulation of deterministic time to show an unconditional Ω(n2log3(n)loglog2(n))\Omega(\frac{n^2}{\log^3(n) \log\log^2(n)}) time complexity lower bound for Intersection Non-Emptiness. Finally, we consider implications that would follow if Intersection Non-Emptiness for a fixed number of DFA's is computationally hard for a fixed polynomial time complexity class. These implications include PTIMEDSPACE(nc)\texttt{PTIME} \subseteq \texttt{DSPACE}(n^c) for some cNc \in \mathbb{N} and PSPACE=EXPTIME\texttt{PSPACE} = \texttt{EXPTIME}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.00297,
  title  = {Unconditional Time and Space Complexity Lower Bounds for Intersection Non-Emptiness},
  author = {Michael Wehar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.00297},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

13 pages, draft

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:00:30.095Z