24 research outputs found
An in-between "implicit" and "explicit" complexity: Automata
Implicit Computational Complexity makes two aspects implicit, by manipulating
programming languages rather than models of com-putation, and by internalizing
the bounds rather than using external measure. We survey how automata theory
contributed to complexity with a machine-dependant with implicit bounds model
Alternating and empty alternating auxiliary stack automata
AbstractWe consider variants of alternating auxiliary stack automata and characterize their computational power when the number of alternations is bounded by a constant or unlimited. In this way we get new characterizations of NP, the polynomial hierarchy, PSpace, and bounded query classes like co-DP=NL〈NP[1]〉 and Θ2P=PNP[O(logn)], in a uniform framework
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
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
On inverse deterministic pushdown transductions
AbstractClasses of source languages which can be mapped by a deterministic pushdown (DPDA) transduction into a given object language (while their complement is mapped into the complement of the object language) are studied. Such classes of source languages are inverse DPDA transductions of the given object language. Similarly for classes of object languages. The inverse DPDA transductions of the Dyck sets are studied in greater detail: they can be recognized in deterministic storage (log n)' but do not comprise all context free languages; their emptiness problem is unsolvable and their closure under homomorphism constitutes the r.e. sets. For each object language L we can exhibit a storage hardest language for the class of inverse DPDA transductions of L; similarly for the classes of regular, deterministic context free, and context free object languages. Last, we classify the classes of inverse DPDA transductions of the regular, deterministic context free, context free and deterministic context sensitive languages
Deterministic Real-Time Tree-Walking-Storage Automata
We study deterministic tree-walking-storage automata, which are finite-state
devices equipped with a tree-like storage. These automata are generalized stack
automata, where the linear stack storage is replaced by a non-linear tree-like
stack. Therefore, tree-walking-storage automata have the ability to explore the
interior of the tree storage without altering the contents, with the possible
moves of the tree pointer corresponding to those of tree-walking automata. In
addition, a tree-walking-storage automaton can append (push) non-existent
descendants to a tree node and remove (pop) leaves from the tree. Here we are
particularly considering the capacities of deterministic tree-walking-storage
automata working in real time. It is shown that even the non-erasing variant
can accept rather complicated unary languages as, for example, the language of
words whose lengths are powers of two, or the language of words whose lengths
are Fibonacci numbers. Comparing the computational capacities with automata
from the classical automata hierarchy, we derive that the families of languages
accepted by real-time deterministic (non-erasing) tree-walking-storage automata
is located between the regular and the deterministic context-sensitive
languages. There is a context-free language that is not accepted by any
real-time deterministic tree-walking-storage automaton. On the other hand,
these devices accept a unary language in non-erasing mode that cannot be
accepted by any classical stack automaton, even in erasing mode and arbitrary
time. Basic closure properties of the induced families of languages are shown.
In particular, we consider Boolean operations (complementation, union,
intersection) and AFL operations (union, intersection with regular languages,
homomorphism, inverse homomorphism, concatenation, iteration). It turns out
that the two families in question have the same properties and, in particular,
share all but one of these closure properties with the important family of
deterministic context-free languages.Comment: In Proceedings NCMA 2023, arXiv:2309.0733