56 research outputs found
DFAs and PFAs with Long Shortest Synchronizing Word Length
It was conjectured by \v{C}ern\'y in 1964, that a synchronizing DFA on
states always has a shortest synchronizing word of length at most ,
and he gave a sequence of DFAs for which this bound is reached. Until now a
full analysis of all DFAs reaching this bound was only given for ,
and with bounds on the number of symbols for . Here we give the full
analysis for , without bounds on the number of symbols.
For PFAs the bound is much higher. For we do a similar analysis as
for DFAs and find the maximal shortest synchronizing word lengths, exceeding
for . For arbitrary n we give a construction of a PFA on
three symbols with exponential shortest synchronizing word length, giving
significantly better bounds than earlier exponential constructions. We give a
transformation of this PFA to a PFA on two symbols keeping exponential shortest
synchronizing word length, yielding a better bound than applying a similar
known transformation.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures source code adde
Synchronizing non-deterministic finite automata
In this paper, we show that every D3-directing CNFA can be mapped uniquely to
a DFA with the same synchronizing word length. This implies that \v{C}ern\'y's
conjecture generalizes to CNFAs and that the general upper bound for the length
of a shortest D3-directing word is equal to the Pin-Frankl bound for DFAs. As a
second consequence, for several classes of CNFAs sharper bounds are
established. Finally, our results allow us to detect all critical CNFAs on at
most 6 states. It turns out that only very few critical CNFAs exist.Comment: 21 page
On random primitive sets, directable NDFAs and the generation of slowly synchronizing DFAs
We tackle the problem of the randomized generation of slowly synchronizing
deterministic automata (DFAs) by generating random primitive sets of matrices.
We show that when the randomized procedure is too simple the exponent of the
generated sets is O(n log n) with high probability, thus the procedure fails to
return DFAs with large reset threshold. We extend this result to random
nondeterministic automata (NDFAs) by showing, in particular, that a uniformly
sampled NDFA has both a 2-directing word and a 3-directing word of length O(n
log n) with high probability. We then present a more involved randomized
algorithm that manages to generate DFAs with large reset threshold and we
finally leverage this finding for exhibiting new families of DFAs with reset
threshold of order .Comment: 31 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1805.0672
DFAs and PFAs with Long Shortest Synchronizing Word Length
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Synchronizing Strongly Connected Partial DFAs
We study synchronizing partial DFAs, which extend the classical concept of
synchronizing complete DFAs and are a special case of synchronizing unambiguous
NFAs. A partial DFA is called synchronizing if it has a word (called a reset
word) whose action brings a non-empty subset of states to a unique state and is
undefined for all other states. While in the general case the problem of
checking whether a partial DFA is synchronizing is PSPACE-complete, we show
that in the strongly connected case this problem can be efficiently reduced to
the same problem for a complete DFA. Using combinatorial, algebraic, and formal
languages methods, we develop techniques that relate main synchronization
problems for strongly connected partial DFAs with the same problems for
complete DFAs. In particular, this includes the \v{C}ern\'{y} and the rank
conjectures, the problem of finding a reset word, and upper bounds on the
length of the shortest reset words of literal automata of finite prefix codes.
We conclude that solving fundamental synchronization problems is equally hard
in both models, as an essential improvement of the results for one model
implies an improvement for the other.Comment: Full version of the paper at STACS 202
Complexity of checking whether two automata are synchronized by the same language
A deterministic finite automaton is said to be synchronizing if it has a
reset word, i.e. a word that brings all states of the automaton to a particular
one. We prove that it is a PSPACE-complete problem to check whether the
language of reset words for a given automaton coincides with the language of
reset words for some particular automaton.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
The Synchronizing Probability Function for Primitive Sets of Matrices
Motivated by recent results relating synchronizing DFAs and primitive sets,
we tackle the synchronization process and the related longstanding
\v{C}ern\'{y} conjecture by studying the primitivity phenomenon for sets of
nonnegative matrices having neither zero-rows nor zero-columns. We formulate
the primitivity process in the setting of a two-player probabilistic game and
we make use of convex optimization techniques to describe its behavior. We
develop a tool for approximating and upper bounding the exponent of any
primitive set and supported by numerical results we state a conjecture that, if
true, would imply a quadratic upper bound on the reset threshold of a new class
of automata.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to DLT 2018 Special Issu
Synchronization Problems in Automata without Non-trivial Cycles
We study the computational complexity of various problems related to
synchronization of weakly acyclic automata, a subclass of widely studied
aperiodic automata. We provide upper and lower bounds on the length of a
shortest word synchronizing a weakly acyclic automaton or, more generally, a
subset of its states, and show that the problem of approximating this length is
hard. We investigate the complexity of finding a synchronizing set of states of
maximum size. We also show inapproximability of the problem of computing the
rank of a subset of states in a binary weakly acyclic automaton and prove that
several problems related to recognizing a synchronizing subset of states in
such automata are NP-complete.Comment: Extended and corrected version, including arXiv:1608.00889.
Conference version was published at CIAA 2017, LNCS vol. 10329, pages
188-200, 201
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