Descriptional Complexity of Finite Automata -- Selected Highlights

The state complexity, respectively, nondeterministic state complexity of a regular language $L$ is the number of states of the minimal deterministic, respectively, of a minimal nondeterministic finite automaton for $L$. Some of the most studied state complexity questions deal with size comparisons of nondeterministic finite automata of differing degree of ambiguity. More generally, if for a regular language we compare the size of description by a finite automaton and by a more powerful language definition mechanism, such as a context-free grammar, we encounter non-recursive trade-offs. Operational state complexity studies the state complexity of the language resulting from a regularity preserving operation as a function of the complexity of the argument languages. Determining the state complexity of combined operations is generally challenging and for general combinations of operations that include intersection and marked concatenation it is uncomputable

Automaták , fixpontok, és logika = Automata, fixed points, and logic

Megmutattuk, hogy a véges automaták (faautomaták, súlyozott automaták, stb.) viselkedése végesen leírható a fixpont művelet általános tulajdonságainak felhasználásával. Teljes axiomatizálást adtunk a véges automaták viselkedését leíró racionális hatványsorokra és fasorokra, ill. a véges automaták biszimuláció alapú viselkedésére. Megmutattuk, hogy az automaták elméletének alapvető Kleene tétele és általánosításai a fixpont művelet azonosságainak következménye. Algebrai eszközökkel vizsgáltuk az elágazó idejű temporális logikák és a monadikus másodrendű logika frágmenseinek kifejező erejét fákon. Fő eredményünk egy olyan kölcsönösen egyértelmű kapcsolat kimutatása, amely ezen logikák kifejező erejének vizsgálatát visszavezeti véges algebrák és preklónok bizonyos pszeudovarietásainak vizsgálatára. Jellemeztük a reguláris és környezetfüggetlen nyelvek lexikografikus rendezéseit, végtelen szavakra általánosítottuk a környezetfüggetlen nyelv fogalmát, és tisztáztuk ezek számos algoritmikus tulajdonságát. | We have proved that the the bahavior of finite automata (tree automata, weighted automata, etc.) has a finite description with respect to the general properties of fixed point operations. We have obtained complete axiomatizations of rational power series and tree series, and the bisimulation based behavior of finite automata. As an intermediate step of the completeness proofs, we have shown that Kleene's fundamental theorem and its generalizations follow from the equational properties of fixed point operations. We have developed an algebraic framework for describing the expressive power of branching time temporal logics and fragments of monadic second-order logic on trees. Our main results establish a bijective correspondence between these logics and certain pseudo-varieties of finite algebras and/or finitary preclones. We have characterized the lexicographic orderings of the regular and context-free languages and generalized the notion of context-free languages to infinite words and established several of their algorithmic properties

State complexity of union and intersection of star on k regular languages

AbstractIn this paper, we continue our study on state complexity of combined operations. We study the state complexities of L1∗∪L2∗, ⋃i=1kLi∗, L1∗∩L2∗, and ⋂i=1kLi∗ for regular languages Li, 1≤i≤k. We obtain the exact bounds for these combined operations and show that the bounds are different from the mathematical compositions of the state complexities of their component individual operations

Lower bounds for the size of deterministic unranked tree automata

AbstractTree automata operating on unranked trees use regular languages, called horizontal languages, to define the transitions of the vertical states that define the bottom-up computation of the automaton. It is well known that the deterministic tree automaton with smallest total number of states, that is, number of vertical states and number of states used to define the horizontal languages, is not unique and it is hard to establish lower bounds for the total number of states. By relying on existing bounds for the size of unambiguous finite automata, we give a lower bound for the size blow-up of determinizing a nondeterministic unranked tree automaton. The lower bound improves the earlier known lower bound that was based on an ad hoc construction

Advanced Topics on State Complexity of Combined Operations

State complexity is a fundamental topic in formal languages and automata theory. The study of state complexity is also strongly motivated by applications of finite automata in software engineering, programming languages, natural language and speech processing and other practical areas. Since many of these applications use automata of large sizes, it is important to know the number of states of the automata. In this thesis, we firstly discuss the state complexities of individual operations on regular languages, including union, intersection, star, catenation, reversal and so on. The state complexity of an operation on unary languages is usually different from that of the same operation on languages over a larger alphabet. Both kinds of state complexities are reviewed in the thesis. Secondly, we study the exact state complexities of twelve combined operations on regular languages. The state complexities of most of these combined operations are not equal to the compositions of the state complexities of the individual operations which make up these combined operations. We also explore the reason for this difference. Finally, we introduce the concept of estimation and approximation of state complexity. We show close estimates and approximations of the state complexities of six combined operations on regular languages which are good enough to use in practice