Primitive digraphs with large exponents and slowly synchronizing automata

We present several infinite series of synchronizing automata for which the minimum length of reset words is close to the square of the number of states. All these automata are tightly related to primitive digraphs with large exponent.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables. This is a translation (with a slightly updated bibliography) of the authors' paper published in Russian in: Zapiski Nauchnyh Seminarov POMI [Kombinatorika i Teorija Grafov. IV], Vol. 402, 9-39 (2012), see ftp://ftp.pdmi.ras.ru/pub/publicat/znsl/v402/p009.pdf Version 2: a few typos are correcte

Slowly synchronizing automata and digraphs

We present several infinite series of synchronizing automata for which the minimum length of reset words is close to the square of the number of states. These automata are closely related to primitive digraphs with large exponent.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

Reset thresholds of automata with two cycle lengths

We present several series of synchronizing automata with multiple parameters, generalizing previously known results. Let p and q be two arbitrary co-prime positive integers, q > p. We describe reset thresholds of the colorings of primitive digraphs with exactly one cycle of length p and one cycle of length q. Also, we study reset thresholds of the colorings of primitive digraphs with exactly one cycle of length q and two cycles of length p.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, submitted to CIAA 201

On the Number of Synchronizing Colorings of Digraphs

We deal with $k$-out-regular directed multigraphs with loops (called simply \emph{digraphs}). The edges of such a digraph can be colored by elements of some fixed $k$-element set in such a way that outgoing edges of every vertex have different colors. Such a coloring corresponds naturally to an automaton. The road coloring theorem states that every primitive digraph has a synchronizing coloring. In the present paper we study how many synchronizing colorings can exist for a digraph with $n$ vertices. We performed an extensive experimental investigation of digraphs with small number of vertices. This was done by using our dedicated algorithm exhaustively enumerating all small digraphs. We also present a series of digraphs whose fraction of synchronizing colorings is equal to $1-1/k^d$, for every $d \ge 1$ and the number of vertices large enough. On the basis of our results we state several conjectures and open problems. In particular, we conjecture that $1-1/k$ is the smallest possible fraction of synchronizing colorings, except for a single exceptional example on 6 vertices for $k=2$.Comment: CIAA 2015. The final publication is available at http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-22360-5_1

Attainable Values of Reset Thresholds

An automaton is synchronizing if there exists a word that sends all states of the automaton to a single state. The reset threshold is the length of the shortest such word. We study the set RT_n of attainable reset thresholds by automata with n states. Relying on constructions of digraphs with known local exponents we show that the intervals [1, (n^2-3n+4)/2] and [(p-1)(q-1), p(q-2)+n-q+1], where 2 n, gcd(p,q)=1, belong to RT_n, even if restrict our attention to strongly connected automata. Moreover, we prove that in this case the smallest value that does not belong to RT_n is at least n^2 - O(n^{1.7625} log n / log log n). This value is increased further assuming certain conjectures about the gaps between consecutive prime numbers. We also show that any value smaller than n(n-1)/2 is attainable by an automaton with a sink state and any value smaller than n^2-O(n^{1.5}) is attainable in general case. Furthermore, we solve the problem of existence of slowly synchronizing automata over an arbitrarily large alphabet, by presenting for every fixed size of the alphabet an infinite series of irreducibly synchronizing automata with the reset threshold n^2-O(n)

Lower bounds for the length of reset words in eulerian automata

For each odd n ≥ 5 we present a synchronizing Eulerian automaton with n states for which the minimum length of reset words is equal to n 2-3n+4/2. We also discuss various connections between the reset threshold of a synchronizing automaton and a sequence of reachability properties in its underlying graph. © 2013 World Scientific Publishing Company

A linear bound on the k-rendezvous time for primitive sets of NZ matrices

A set of nonnegative matrices is called primitive if there exists a product of these matrices that is entrywise positive. Motivated by recent results relating synchronizing automata and primitive sets, we study the length of the shortest product of a primitive set having a column or a row with k positive entries, called its k-rendezvous time (k-RT}), in the case of sets of matrices having no zero rows and no zero columns. We prove that the k-RT is at most linear w.r.t. the matrix size n for small k, while the problem is still open for synchronizing automata. We provide two upper bounds on the k-RT: the second is an improvement of the first one, although the latter can be written in closed form. We then report numerical results comparing our upper bounds on the k-RT with heuristic approximation methods.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figur