Polynomial-Space Completeness of Reachability for Succinct Branching VASS in Dimension One

Whether the reachability problem for branching vector addition systems, or equivalently the provability problem for multiplicative exponential linear logic, is decidable has been a long-standing open question. The one-dimensional case is a generalisation of the extensively studied one-counter nets, and it was recently established polynomial-time complete provided counter updates are given in unary. Our main contribution is to determine the complexity when the encoding is binary: polynomial-space complete

A polynomial-time algorithm for reachability in branching VASS in dimension one

Branching VASS (BVASS) generalise vector addition systems with states by allowing for special branching transitions that can non-deterministically distribute a counter value between two control states. A run of a BVASS consequently becomes a tree, and reachability is to decide whether a given configuration is the root of a reachability tree. This paper shows P-completeness of reachability in BVASS in dimension one, the first decidability result for reachability in a subclass of BVASS known so far. Moreover, we show that coverability and boundedness in BVASS in dimension one are P-complete as well

The Reachability Problem for Petri Nets is Not Elementary

Petri nets, also known as vector addition systems, are a long established model of concurrency with extensive applications in modelling and analysis of hardware, software and database systems, as well as chemical, biological and business processes. The central algorithmic problem for Petri nets is reachability: whether from the given initial configuration there exists a sequence of valid execution steps that reaches the given final configuration. The complexity of the problem has remained unsettled since the 1960s, and it is one of the most prominent open questions in the theory of verification. Decidability was proved by Mayr in his seminal STOC 1981 work, and the currently best published upper bound is non-primitive recursive Ackermannian of Leroux and Schmitz from LICS 2019. We establish a non-elementary lower bound, i.e. that the reachability problem needs a tower of exponentials of time and space. Until this work, the best lower bound has been exponential space, due to Lipton in 1976. The new lower bound is a major breakthrough for several reasons. Firstly, it shows that the reachability problem is much harder than the coverability (i.e., state reachability) problem, which is also ubiquitous but has been known to be complete for exponential space since the late 1970s. Secondly, it implies that a plethora of problems from formal languages, logic, concurrent systems, process calculi and other areas, that are known to admit reductions from the Petri nets reachability problem, are also not elementary. Thirdly, it makes obsolete the currently best lower bounds for the reachability problems for two key extensions of Petri nets: with branching and with a pushdown stack.Comment: Final version of STOC'1

Complexity Hierarchies Beyond Elementary

We introduce a hierarchy of fast-growing complexity classes and show its suitability for completeness statements of many non elementary problems. This hierarchy allows the classification of many decision problems with a non-elementary complexity, which occur naturally in logic, combinatorics, formal languages, verification, etc., with complexities ranging from simple towers of exponentials to Ackermannian and beyond.Comment: Version 3 is the published version in TOCT 8(1:3), 2016. I will keep updating the catalogue of problems from Section 6 in future revision

Tower-Complete Problems in Contraction-Free Substructural Logics

We investigate the non-elementary computational complexity of a family of substructural logics without contraction. With the aid of the technique pioneered by Lazi? and Schmitz (2015), we show that the deducibility problem for full Lambek calculus with exchange and weakening (FL_{ew}) is not in Elementary (i.e., the class of decision problems that can be decided in time bounded by an elementary recursive function), but is in PR (i.e., the class of decision problems that can be decided in time bounded by a primitive recursive function). More precisely, we show that this problem is complete for Tower, which is a non-elementary complexity class forming a part of the fast-growing complexity hierarchy introduced by Schmitz (2016). The same complexity result holds even for deducibility in BCK-logic, i.e., the implicational fragment of FL_{ew}. We furthermore show the Tower-completeness of the provability problem for elementary affine logic, which was proved to be decidable by Dal Lago and Martini (2004)

An Approach to Regular Separability in Vector Addition Systems

We study the problem of regular separability of languages of vector addition systems with states (VASS). It asks whether for two given VASS languages K and L, there exists a regular language R that includes K and is disjoint from L. While decidability of the problem in full generality remains an open question, there are several subclasses for which decidability has been shown: It is decidable for (i) one-dimensional VASS, (ii) VASS coverability languages, (iii) languages of integer VASS, and (iv) commutative VASS languages. We propose a general approach to deciding regular separability. We use it to decide regular separability of an arbitrary VASS language from any language in the classes (i), (ii), and (iii). This generalizes all previous results, including (iv)

The reachability problem for Petri nets is not elementary

Petri nets, also known as vector addition systems, are a long established model of concurrency with extensive applications in modelling and analysis of hardware, software and database systems, as well as chemical, biological and business processes. The central algorithmic problem for Petri nets is reachability: whether from the given initial configuration there exists a sequence of valid execution steps that reaches the given final configuration. The complexity of the problem has remained unsettled since the 1960s, and it is one of the most prominent open questions in the theory of verification. Decidability was proved by Mayr in his seminal STOC 1981 work, and the currently best published upper bound is non-primitive recursive Ackermannian of Leroux and Schmitz from LICS 2019. We establish a non-elementary lower bound, i.e. that the reachability problem needs a tower of exponentials of time and space. Until this work, the best lower bound has been exponential space, due to Lipton in 1976. The new lower bound is a major breakthrough for several reasons. Firstly, it shows that the reachability problem is much harder than the coverability (i.e., state reachability) problem, which is also ubiquitous but has been known to be complete for exponential space since the late 1970s. Secondly, it implies that a plethora of problems from formal languages, logic, concurrent systems, process calculi and other areas, that are known to admit reductions from the Petri nets reachability problem, are also not elementary. Thirdly, it makes obsolete the currently best lower bounds for the reachability problems for two key extensions of Petri nets: with branching and with a pushdown stack

Tower-Complete Problems in Contraction-Free Substructural Logics

We investigate the non-elementary computational complexity of a family of substructural logics without contraction. With the aid of the technique pioneered by Lazi\'c and Schmitz (2015), we show that the deducibility problem for full Lambek calculus with exchange and weakening ($\mathbf{FL}_{\mathbf{ew}}$) is not in Elementary (i.e., the class of decision problems that can be decided in time bounded by an elementary recursive function), but is in PR (i.e., the class of decision problems that can be decided in time bounded by a primitive recursive function). More precisely, we show that this problem is complete for Tower, which is a non-elementary complexity class forming a part of the fast-growing complexity hierarchy introduced by Schmitz (2016). The same complexity result holds even for deducibility in BCK-logic, i.e., the implicational fragment of $\mathbf{FL}_{\mathbf{ew}}$. We furthermore show the Tower-completeness of the provability problem for elementary affine logic, which was proved to be decidable by Dal Lago and Martini (2004).Comment: The full version of the paper accepted to CSL 202