69 research outputs found
Multi-Head Finite Automata: Characterizations, Concepts and Open Problems
Multi-head finite automata were introduced in (Rabin, 1964) and (Rosenberg,
1966). Since that time, a vast literature on computational and descriptional
complexity issues on multi-head finite automata documenting the importance of
these devices has been developed. Although multi-head finite automata are a
simple concept, their computational behavior can be already very complex and
leads to undecidable or even non-semi-decidable problems on these devices such
as, for example, emptiness, finiteness, universality, equivalence, etc. These
strong negative results trigger the study of subclasses and alternative
characterizations of multi-head finite automata for a better understanding of
the nature of non-recursive trade-offs and, thus, the borderline between
decidable and undecidable problems. In the present paper, we tour a fragment of
this literature
Computing with cells: membrane systems - some complexity issues.
Membrane computing is a branch of natural computing which abstracts computing models from the structure and the functioning of the living cell. The main ingredients of membrane systems, called P systems, are (i) the membrane structure, which consists of a hierarchical arrangements of membranes which delimit compartments where (ii) multisets of symbols, called objects, evolve according to (iii) sets of rules which are localised and associated with compartments. By using the rules in a nondeterministic/deterministic maximally parallel manner, transitions between the system configurations can be obtained. A sequence of transitions is a computation of how the system is evolving. Various ways of controlling the transfer of objects from one membrane to another and applying the rules, as well as possibilities to dissolve, divide or create membranes have been studied. Membrane systems have a great potential for implementing massively concurrent systems in an efficient way that would allow us to solve currently intractable problems once future biotechnology gives way to a practical bio-realization. In this paper we survey some interesting and fundamental complexity issues such as universality vs. nonuniversality, determinism vs. nondeterminism, membrane and alphabet size hierarchies, characterizations of context-sensitive languages and other language classes and various notions of parallelism
Cyclic Proofs and Jumping Automata
We consider a fragment of a cyclic sequent proof system for Kleene algebra, and we see it as a computational device for recognising languages of words. The starting proof system is linear and we show that it captures precisely the regular languages. When adding the standard contraction rule, the expressivity raises significantly; we characterise the corresponding class of languages using a new notion of multi-head finite automata, where heads can jump
Automata with Nested Pebbles Capture First-Order Logic with Transitive Closure
String languages recognizable in (deterministic) log-space are characterized
either by two-way (deterministic) multi-head automata, or following Immerman,
by first-order logic with (deterministic) transitive closure. Here we elaborate
this result, and match the number of heads to the arity of the transitive
closure. More precisely, first-order logic with k-ary deterministic transitive
closure has the same power as deterministic automata walking on their input
with k heads, additionally using a finite set of nested pebbles. This result is
valid for strings, ordered trees, and in general for families of graphs having
a fixed automaton that can be used to traverse the nodes of each of the graphs
in the family. Other examples of such families are grids, toruses, and
rectangular mazes. For nondeterministic automata, the logic is restricted to
positive occurrences of transitive closure.
The special case of k=1 for trees, shows that single-head deterministic
tree-walking automata with nested pebbles are characterized by first-order
logic with unary deterministic transitive closure. This refines our earlier
result that placed these automata between first-order and monadic second-order
logic on trees.Comment: Paper for Logical Methods in Computer Science, 27 pages, 1 figur
Equality languages and fixed point languages
This paper considers equality languages and fixed-point languages of homomorphisms and deterministic gsm mappings. It provides some basic properties of these classes of languages. We introduce a new subclass of dgsm mappings, the so-called symmetric dgsm mappings. We prove that (unlike for arbitrary dgsm mappings) their fixed-point languages are regular but not effectively obtainable. This result has various consequences. In particular we strengthen a result from Ehrenfeucht, A., and Rozenberg, G. [(1978), Theor. Comp. Sci. 7, 169–184] by pointing out a class of homomorphisms which includes elementary homomorphisms but still has regular equality languages. Also we show that the result from Herman, G. T., and Walker, A. [(1976), Theor. Comp. Sci. 2, 115–130] that fixed-point languages of DIL mappings are regular, is not effective
Transitive Closure Logic and Multihead Automata with Nested Pebbles
Several extensions of first-order logic are studied in descriptive complexity theory. These extensions include transitive closure logic and deterministic transitive closure logic, which extend first-order logic with transitive closure operators. It is known that deterministic transitive closure logic captures the complexity class of the languages that are decidable by some deterministic Turing machine using a logarithmic amount of memory space. An analogous result holds for transitive closure logic and nondeterministic Turing machines.
This thesis concerns the k-ary fragments of these two logics. In each k-ary fragment, the arities of transitive closure operators appearing in formulas are restricted to a nonzero natural number k. The expressivity of these fragments can be studied in terms of multihead finite automata. The type of automaton that we consider in this thesis is a two-way multihead automaton with nested pebbles.
We look at the expressive power of multihead automata and the k-ary fragments of transitive closure logics in the class of finite structures called word models. We show that deterministic twoway k-head automata with nested pebbles have the same expressive power as first-order logic with k-ary deterministic transitive closure. For a corresponding result in the case of nondeterministic automata, we restrict to the positive fragment of k-ary transitive closure logic. The two theorems and their proofs are based on the article ’Automata with nested pebbles capture first-order logic with transitive closure’ by Joost Engelfriet and Hendrik Jan Hoogeboom. In the article, the results are proved in the case of trees. Since word models can be viewed as a special type of trees, the theorems considered in this thesis are a special case of a more general result
Tradeoffs for language recognition on alternating machines
AbstractThe alternating machine having a separate input tape with k two-way, read-only heads, and a certain number of internal configurations, AM(k), is considered as a parallel computing model. For the complexity measure TIME · SPACE · PARALLELISM (TSP), the optimal lower bounds Ω(n2) and Ω(n3/2) respectively are proved for the recognition of specific languages on AM(1) and AM(k) respectively. For the complexity measure REVERSALS · SPACE · PARALLELISM (RSP), the lower bound Ω(n1/2) is established for the recognition of a specific language on AM(k). This result implies a polynomial lower bound on PARALLEL TIME · HARDWARE of parallel RAM's.Lower bounds on the complexity measures TIME · SPACE and REVERSALS · SPACE of nondeterministic machines are direct consequences of the result introduced above.All lower bounds obtained are substantially improved in the case that SPACE⩾ nɛ for 0<ɛ<1. Several strongest lower bounds for two-way and one-way alternating (deterministic, nondeterministic) multihead finite automata are obtained as direct consequences of these results. The hierarchies for the complexity measures TSP, RSP, TS and RS can be immediately achieved too
Bounded Counter Languages
We show that deterministic finite automata equipped with two-way heads
are equivalent to deterministic machines with a single two-way input head and
linearly bounded counters if the accepted language is strictly bounded,
i.e., a subset of for a fixed sequence of symbols . Then we investigate linear speed-up for counter machines. Lower
and upper time bounds for concrete recognition problems are shown, implying
that in general linear speed-up does not hold for counter machines. For bounded
languages we develop a technique for speeding up computations by any constant
factor at the expense of adding a fixed number of counters
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