74 research outputs found
Game Characterization of Probabilistic Bisimilarity, and Applications to Pushdown Automata
We study the bisimilarity problem for probabilistic pushdown automata (pPDA)
and subclasses thereof. Our definition of pPDA allows both probabilistic and
non-deterministic branching, generalising the classical notion of pushdown
automata (without epsilon-transitions). We first show a general
characterization of probabilistic bisimilarity in terms of two-player games,
which naturally reduces checking bisimilarity of probabilistic labelled
transition systems to checking bisimilarity of standard (non-deterministic)
labelled transition systems. This reduction can be easily implemented in the
framework of pPDA, allowing to use known results for standard
(non-probabilistic) PDA and their subclasses. A direct use of the reduction
incurs an exponential increase of complexity, which does not matter in deriving
decidability of bisimilarity for pPDA due to the non-elementary complexity of
the problem. In the cases of probabilistic one-counter automata (pOCA), of
probabilistic visibly pushdown automata (pvPDA), and of probabilistic basic
process algebras (i.e., single-state pPDA) we show that an implicit use of the
reduction can avoid the complexity increase; we thus get PSPACE, EXPTIME, and
2-EXPTIME upper bounds, respectively, like for the respective non-probabilistic
versions. The bisimilarity problems for OCA and vPDA are known to have matching
lower bounds (thus being PSPACE-complete and EXPTIME-complete, respectively);
we show that these lower bounds also hold for fully probabilistic versions that
do not use non-determinism
Deciding Semantic Finiteness of Pushdown Processes and First-Order Grammars w.r.t. Bisimulation Equivalence
The problem if a given configuration of a pushdown automaton (PDA) is
bisimilar with some (unspecified) finite-state process is shown to be
decidable. The decidability is proven in the framework of first-order grammars, which are given by finite sets of labelled rules that rewrite roots of first-order terms. The framework is equivalent to PDA where also deterministic popping epsilon-steps are allowed, i.e. to the model for which Senizergues showed an involved procedure deciding bisimilarity (FOCS 1998). Such a procedure is here used as a black-box part of the algorithm. For deterministic PDA the regularity problem was shown decidable by Valiant (JACM 1975) but the decidability question for nondeterministic PDA, answered positively here, had been open (as indicated, e.g., by Broadbent and Goeller, FSTTCS 2012)
Bisimulation Equivalence of First-Order Grammars is ACKERMANN-Complete
Checking whether two pushdown automata with restricted silent actions are
weakly bisimilar was shown decidable by S\'enizergues (1998, 2005). We provide
the first known complexity upper bound for this famous problem, in the
equivalent setting of first-order grammars. This ACKERMANN upper bound is
optimal, and we also show that strong bisimilarity is primitive-recursive when
the number of states of the automata is fixed
Pushdown Normal-Form Bisimulation: A Nominal Context-Free Approach to Program Equivalence
We propose Pushdown Normal Form (PDNF) Bisimulation to verify contextual
equivalence in higher-order functional programming languages with local state.
Similar to previous work on Normal Form (NF) bisimulation, PDNF Bisimulation is
sound and complete with respect to contextual equivalence. However, unlike
traditional NF Bisimulation, PDNF Bisimulation is also decidable for a class of
program terms that reach bounded configurations but can potentially have
unbounded call stacks and input an unbounded number of unknown functions from
their context. Our approach relies on the principle that, in model-checking for
reachability, pushdown systems can be simulated by finite-state automata
designed to accept their initial/final stack content. We embody this in a
stackless Labelled Transition System (LTS), together with an on-the-fly
saturation procedure for call stacks, upon which bisimulation is defined. To
enhance the effectiveness of our bisimulation, we develop up-to techniques and
confirm their soundness for PDNF Bisimulation. We develop a prototype
implementation of our technique which is able to verify equivalence in examples
from practice and the literature that were out of reach for previous work
Equivalence-Checking on Infinite-State Systems: Techniques and Results
The paper presents a selection of recently developed and/or used techniques
for equivalence-checking on infinite-state systems, and an up-to-date overview
of existing results (as of September 2004)
Lattice structures for bisimilar Probabilistic Automata
The paper shows that there is a deep structure on certain sets of bisimilar
Probabilistic Automata (PA). The key prerequisite for these structures is a
notion of compactness of PA. It is shown that compact bisimilar PA form
lattices. These results are then used in order to establish normal forms not
only for finite automata, but also for infinite automata, as long as they are
compact.Comment: In Proceedings INFINITY 2013, arXiv:1402.661
Decidability of Bisimulation Equivalence for Pushdown Processes
We show that bisimulation equivalence is decidable for pushdown automata without epsilon-transitions
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