Cost Automata, Safe Schemes, and Downward Closures

Higher-order recursion schemes are an expressive formalism used to define languages of possibly infinite ranked trees. They extend regular and context-free grammars, and are equivalent to simply typed ?Y-calculus and collapsible pushdown automata. In this work we prove, under a syntactical constraint called safety, decidability of the model-checking problem for recursion schemes against properties defined by alternating B-automata, an extension of alternating parity automata for infinite trees with a boundedness acceptance condition. We then exploit this result to show how to compute downward closures of languages of finite trees recognized by safe recursion schemes

Probabilistic Disclosure: Maximisation vs. Minimisation

We consider opacity questions where an observation function provides to an external attacker a view of the states along executions and secret executions are those visiting some state from a fixed subset. Disclosure occurs when the observer can deduce from a finite observation that the execution is secret, the epsilon-disclosure variant corresponding to the execution being secret with probability greater than 1 - epsilon. In a probabilistic and non deterministic setting, where an internal agent can choose between actions, there are two points of view, depending on the status of this agent: the successive choices can either help the attacker trying to disclose the secret, if the system has been corrupted, or they can prevent disclosure as much as possible if these choices are part of the system design. In the former situation, corresponding to a worst case, the disclosure value is the supremum over the strategies of the probability to disclose the secret (maximisation), whereas in the latter case, the disclosure is the infimum (minimisation). We address quantitative problems (comparing the optimal value with a threshold) and qualitative ones (when the threshold is zero or one) related to both forms of disclosure for a fixed or finite horizon. For all problems, we characterise their decidability status and their complexity. We discover a surprising asymmetry: on the one hand optimal strategies may be chosen among deterministic ones in maximisation problems, while it is not the case for minimisation. On the other hand, for the questions addressed here, more minimisation problems than maximisation ones are decidable

Algorithms for subgraph complementation to some classes of graphs

For a class $\mathcal{G}$ of graphs, the objective of \textsc{Subgraph Complementation to} $\mathcal{G}$ is to find whether there exists a subset $S$ of vertices of the input graph $G$ such that modifying $G$ by complementing the subgraph induced by $S$ results in a graph in $\mathcal{G}$. We obtain a polynomial-time algorithm for the problem when $\mathcal{G}$ is the class of graphs with minimum degree at least $k$, for a constant $k$, answering an open problem by Fomin et al. (Algorithmica, 2020). When $\mathcal{G}$ is the class of graphs without any induced copies of the star graph on $t+1$ vertices (for any constant $t\geq 3$) and diamond, we obtain a polynomial-time algorithm for the problem. This is in contrast with a result by Antony et al. (Algorithmica, 2022) that the problem is NP-complete and cannot be solved in subexponential-time (assuming the Exponential Time Hypothesis) when $\mathcal{G}$ is the class of graphs without any induced copies of the star graph on $t+1$ vertices, for every constant $t\geq 5$

The zero-error randomized query complexity of the pointer function

The pointer function of G{\"{o}}{\"{o}}s, Pitassi and Watson \cite{DBLP:journals/eccc/GoosP015a} and its variants have recently been used to prove separation results among various measures of complexity such as deterministic, randomized and quantum query complexities, exact and approximate polynomial degrees, etc. In particular, the widest possible (quadratic) separations between deterministic and zero-error randomized query complexity, as well as between bounded-error and zero-error randomized query complexity, have been obtained by considering {\em variants}~\cite{DBLP:journals/corr/AmbainisBBL15} of this pointer function. However, as was pointed out in \cite{DBLP:journals/corr/AmbainisBBL15}, the precise zero-error complexity of the original pointer function was not known. We show a lower bound of $\widetilde{\Omega}(n^{3/4})$ on the zero-error randomized query complexity of the pointer function on $\Theta(n \log n)$ bits; since an $\widetilde{O}(n^{3/4})$ upper bound is already known \cite{DBLP:conf/fsttcs/MukhopadhyayS15}, our lower bound is optimal up to a factor of \polylog\, n

Dependences in Strategy Logic

Strategy Logic (SL) is a very expressive temporal logic for specifying and verifying properties of multi-agent systems: in SL, one can quantify over strategies, assign them to agents, and express LTL properties of the resulting plays. Such a powerful framework has two drawbacks: First, model checking SL has non-elementary complexity; second, the exact semantics of SL is rather intricate, and may not correspond to what is expected. In this paper, we focus on strategy dependences in SL, by tracking how existentially-quantified strategies in a formula may (or may not) depend on other strategies selected in the formula, revisiting the approach of [Mogavero et al., Reasoning about strategies: On the model-checking problem, 2014]. We explain why elementary dependences, as defined by Mogavero et al., do not exactly capture the intended concept of behavioral strategies. We address this discrepancy by introducing timeline dependences, and exhibit a large fragment of SL for which model checking can be performed in 2-EXPTIME under this new semantics

The Complexity of the Diagonal Problem for Recursion Schemes

We consider nondeterministic higher-order recursion schemes as recognizers of languages of finite words or finite trees. We establish the complexity of the diagonal problem for schemes: given a set of letters A and a scheme G, is it the case that for every number n the scheme accepts a word (a tree) in which every letter from A appears at least n times. We prove that this problem is (m-1)-EXPTIME-complete for word-recognizing schemes of order m, and m-EXPTIME-complete for tree-recognizing schemes of order m

A Unified Method for Placing Problems in Polylogarithmic Depth

In this work we consider the term evaluation problem which is, given a term over some algebra and a valid input to the term, computing the value of the term on that input. In contrast to previous methods we allow the algebra to be completely general and consider the problem of obtaining an efficient upper bound for this problem. Many variants of the problems where the algebra is well behaved have been studied. For example, the problem over the Boolean semiring or over the semiring (N,+,*). We extend this line of work. Our efficient term evaluation algorithm then serves as a tool for obtaining polylogarithmic depth upper bounds for various well-studied problems. To demonstrate the utility of our result we show new bounds and reprove known results for a large spectrum of problems. In particular, the applications of the algorithm we consider include (but are not restricted to) arithmetic formula evaluation, word problems for tree and visibly pushdown automata, and various problems related to bounded tree-width and clique-width graphs

Homogeneity Without Loss of Generality

We consider higher-order recursion schemes as generators of infinite trees. A sort (simple type) is called homogeneous when all arguments of higher order are taken before any arguments of lower order. We prove that every scheme can be converted into an equivalent one (i.e, generating the same tree) that is homogeneous, that is, uses only homogeneous sorts. Then, we prove the same for safe schemes: every safe scheme can be converted into an equivalent safe homogeneous scheme. Furthermore, we compare two definition of safe schemes: the original definition of Damm, and the modern one. Finally, we prove a lemma which illustrates usefulness of the homogeneity assumption. The results are known, but we prove them in a novel way: by directly manipulating considered schemes

Diameter and k-Center in Sliding Windows

In this paper we develop streaming algorithms for the diameter problem and the k-center clustering problem in the sliding window model. In this model we are interested in maintaining a solution for the N most recent points of the stream. In the diameter problem we would like to maintain two points whose distance approximates the diameter of the point set in the window. Our algorithm computes a (3 + epsilon)-approximation and uses O(1/epsilon*ln(alpha)) memory cells, where alpha is the ratio of the largest and smallest distance and is assumed to be known in advance. We also prove that under reasonable assumptions obtaining a (3 - epsilon)-approximation requires Omega(N1/3) space. For the k-center problem, where the goal is to find k centers that minimize the maximum distance of a point to its nearest center, we obtain a (6 + epsilon)-approximation using O(k/epsilon*ln(alpha)) memory cells and a (4 + epsilon)-approximation for the special case k = 2. We also prove that any algorithm for the 2-center problem that achieves an approximation ratio of less than 4 requires Omega(N^{1/3}) space