24,973 research outputs found
On the state complexity of semi-quantum finite automata
Some of the most interesting and important results concerning quantum finite
automata are those showing that they can recognize certain languages with
(much) less resources than corresponding classical finite automata
\cite{Amb98,Amb09,AmYa11,Ber05,Fre09,Mer00,Mer01,Mer02,Yak10,ZhgQiu112,Zhg12}.
This paper shows three results of such a type that are stronger in some sense
than other ones because (a) they deal with models of quantum automata with very
little quantumness (so-called semi-quantum one- and two-way automata with one
qubit memory only); (b) differences, even comparing with probabilistic
classical automata, are bigger than expected; (c) a trade-off between the
number of classical and quantum basis states needed is demonstrated in one case
and (d) languages (or the promise problem) used to show main results are very
simple and often explored ones in automata theory or in communication
complexity, with seemingly little structure that could be utilized.Comment: 19 pages. We improve (make stronger) the results in section
One-Tape Turing Machine Variants and Language Recognition
We present two restricted versions of one-tape Turing machines. Both
characterize the class of context-free languages. In the first version,
proposed by Hibbard in 1967 and called limited automata, each tape cell can be
rewritten only in the first visits, for a fixed constant .
Furthermore, for deterministic limited automata are equivalent to
deterministic pushdown automata, namely they characterize deterministic
context-free languages. Further restricting the possible operations, we
consider strongly limited automata. These models still characterize
context-free languages. However, the deterministic version is less powerful
than the deterministic version of limited automata. In fact, there exist
deterministic context-free languages that are not accepted by any deterministic
strongly limited automaton.Comment: 20 pages. This article will appear in the Complexity Theory Column of
the September 2015 issue of SIGACT New
Quotient Complexity of Regular Languages
The past research on the state complexity of operations on regular languages
is examined, and a new approach based on an old method (derivatives of regular
expressions) is presented. Since state complexity is a property of a language,
it is appropriate to define it in formal-language terms as the number of
distinct quotients of the language, and to call it "quotient complexity". The
problem of finding the quotient complexity of a language f(K,L) is considered,
where K and L are regular languages and f is a regular operation, for example,
union or concatenation. Since quotients can be represented by derivatives, one
can find a formula for the typical quotient of f(K,L) in terms of the quotients
of K and L. To obtain an upper bound on the number of quotients of f(K,L) all
one has to do is count how many such quotients are possible, and this makes
automaton constructions unnecessary. The advantages of this point of view are
illustrated by many examples. Moreover, new general observations are presented
to help in the estimation of the upper bounds on quotient complexity of regular
operations
Quantum Cellular Automata
Quantum cellular automata (QCA) are reviewed, including early and more recent
proposals. QCA are a generalization of (classical) cellular automata (CA) and
in particular of reversible CA. The latter are reviewed shortly. An overview is
given over early attempts by various authors to define one-dimensional QCA.
These turned out to have serious shortcomings which are discussed as well.
Various proposals subsequently put forward by a number of authors for a general
definition of one- and higher-dimensional QCA are reviewed and their properties
such as universality and reversibility are discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the Springer Encyclopedia of
Complexity and Systems Scienc
Automata and rational expressions
This text is an extended version of the chapter 'Automata and rational
expressions' in the AutoMathA Handbook that will appear soon, published by the
European Science Foundation and edited by JeanEricPin
Boolean Circuit Complexity of Regular Languages
In this paper we define a new descriptional complexity measure for
Deterministic Finite Automata, BC-complexity, as an alternative to the state
complexity. We prove that for two DFAs with the same number of states
BC-complexity can differ exponentially. In some cases minimization of DFA can
lead to an exponential increase in BC-complexity, on the other hand
BC-complexity of DFAs with a large state space which are obtained by some
standard constructions (determinization of NFA, language operations), is
reasonably small. But our main result is the analogue of the "Shannon effect"
for finite automata: almost all DFAs with a fixed number of states have
BC-complexity that is close to the maximum.Comment: In Proceedings AFL 2014, arXiv:1405.527
Reachability in Higher-Order-Counters
Higher-order counter automata (\HOCS) can be either seen as a restriction of
higher-order pushdown automata (\HOPS) to a unary stack alphabet, or as an
extension of counter automata to higher levels. We distinguish two principal
kinds of \HOCS: those that can test whether the topmost counter value is zero
and those which cannot.
We show that control-state reachability for level \HOCS with -test is
complete for \mbox{}-fold exponential space; leaving out the -test
leads to completeness for \mbox{}-fold exponential time. Restricting
\HOCS (without -test) to level , we prove that global (forward or
backward) reachability analysis is \PTIME-complete. This enhances the known
result for pushdown systems which are subsumed by level \HOCS without
-test.
We transfer our results to the formal language setting. Assuming that \PTIME
\subsetneq \PSPACE \subsetneq \mathbf{EXPTIME}, we apply proof ideas of
Engelfriet and conclude that the hierarchies of languages of \HOPS and of \HOCS
form strictly interleaving hierarchies. Interestingly, Engelfriet's
constructions also allow to conclude immediately that the hierarchy of
collapsible pushdown languages is strict level-by-level due to the existing
complexity results for reachability on collapsible pushdown graphs. This
answers an open question independently asked by Parys and by Kobayashi.Comment: Version with Full Proofs of a paper that appears at MFCS 201
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