69,854 research outputs found
Descriptional Complexity of Finite Automata -- Selected Highlights
The state complexity, respectively, nondeterministic state complexity of a
regular language is the number of states of the minimal deterministic,
respectively, of a minimal nondeterministic finite automaton for . 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
Commutative positive varieties of languages
We study the commutative positive varieties of languages closed under various
operations: shuffle, renaming and product over one-letter alphabets
A connection between concurrency and language theory
We show that three fixed point structures equipped with (sequential)
composition, a sum operation, and a fixed point operation share the same valid
equations. These are the theories of (context-free) languages, (regular) tree
languages, and simulation equivalence classes of (regular) synchronization
trees (or processes). The results reveal a close relationship between classical
language theory and process algebra
On the Expressive Power of 2-Stack Visibly Pushdown Automata
Visibly pushdown automata are input-driven pushdown automata that recognize
some non-regular context-free languages while preserving the nice closure and
decidability properties of finite automata. Visibly pushdown automata with
multiple stacks have been considered recently by La Torre, Madhusudan, and
Parlato, who exploit the concept of visibility further to obtain a rich
automata class that can even express properties beyond the class of
context-free languages. At the same time, their automata are closed under
boolean operations, have a decidable emptiness and inclusion problem, and enjoy
a logical characterization in terms of a monadic second-order logic over words
with an additional nesting structure. These results require a restricted
version of visibly pushdown automata with multiple stacks whose behavior can be
split up into a fixed number of phases. In this paper, we consider 2-stack
visibly pushdown automata (i.e., visibly pushdown automata with two stacks) in
their unrestricted form. We show that they are expressively equivalent to the
existential fragment of monadic second-order logic. Furthermore, it turns out
that monadic second-order quantifier alternation forms an infinite hierarchy
wrt words with multiple nestings. Combining these results, we conclude that
2-stack visibly pushdown automata are not closed under complementation.
Finally, we discuss the expressive power of B\"{u}chi 2-stack visibly pushdown
automata running on infinite (nested) words. Extending the logic by an infinity
quantifier, we can likewise establish equivalence to existential monadic
second-order logic
Quantifiers on languages and codensity monads
This paper contributes to the techniques of topo-algebraic recognition for
languages beyond the regular setting as they relate to logic on words. In
particular, we provide a general construction on recognisers corresponding to
adding one layer of various kinds of quantifiers and prove a corresponding
Reutenauer-type theorem. Our main tools are codensity monads and duality
theory. Our construction hinges on a measure-theoretic characterisation of the
profinite monad of the free S-semimodule monad for finite and commutative
semirings S, which generalises our earlier insight that the Vietoris monad on
Boolean spaces is the codensity monad of the finite powerset functor.Comment: 30 pages. Presentation improved and details of several proofs added.
The main results are unchange
A Fibrational Approach to Automata Theory
For predual categories C and D we establish isomorphisms between opfibrations
representing local varieties of languages in C, local pseudovarieties of
D-monoids, and finitely generated profinite D-monoids. The global sections of
these opfibrations are shown to correspond to varieties of languages in C,
pseudovarieties of D-monoids, and profinite equational theories of D-monoids,
respectively. As an application, we obtain a new proof of Eilenberg's variety
theorem along with several related results, covering varieties of languages and
their coalgebraic modifications, Straubing's C-varieties, fully invariant local
varieties, etc., within a single framework
Varieties of Cost Functions.
Regular cost functions were introduced as a quantitative generalisation of regular languages, retaining many of their equivalent characterisations and decidability properties. For instance, stabilisation monoids play the same role for cost functions as monoids do for regular languages. The purpose of this article is to further extend this algebraic approach by generalising two results on regular languages to cost functions: Eilenberg's varieties theorem and profinite equational characterisations of lattices of regular languages. This opens interesting new perspectives, but the specificities of cost functions introduce difficulties that prevent these generalisations to be straightforward. In contrast, although syntactic algebras can be defined for formal power series over a commutative ring, no such notion is known for series over semirings and in particular over the tropical semiring
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