17 research outputs found
Checking Whether an Automaton Is Monotonic Is NP-complete
An automaton is monotonic if its states can be arranged in a linear order
that is preserved by the action of every letter. We prove that the problem of
deciding whether a given automaton is monotonic is NP-complete. The same result
is obtained for oriented automata, whose states can be arranged in a cyclic
order. Moreover, both problems remain hard under the restriction to binary
input alphabets.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures. CIAA 2015. The final publication is available at
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-22360-5_2
Improving the Upper Bound on the Length of the Shortest Reset Word
We improve the best known upper bound on the length of the shortest reset words of synchronizing automata. The new bound is slightly better than 114 n^3 / 685 + O(n^2). The Cerny conjecture states that (n-1)^2 is an upper bound. So far, the best general upper bound was (n^3-n)/6-1 obtained by J.-E. Pin and P. Frankl in 1982. Despite a number of efforts, it remained unchanged for about 35 years.
To obtain the new upper bound we utilize avoiding words.
A word is avoiding for a state q if after reading the word the automaton cannot be in q. We obtain upper bounds on the length of the shortest avoiding words, and using the approach of Trahtman from 2011 combined with the well-known Frankl theorem from 1982, we improve the general upper bound on the length of the shortest reset words.
For all the bounds, there exist polynomial algorithms finding a word of length not exceeding the bound
Primitive Automata that are Synchronizing
A deterministic finite (semi)automaton is primitive if its transition monoid
(semigroup) acting on the set of states has no non-trivial congruences. It is
synchronizing if it contains a constant map (transformation). In analogy to
synchronizing groups, we study the possibility of characterizing automata that
are synchronizing if primitive. We prove that the implication holds for several
classes of automata. In particular, we show it for automata whose every letter
induce either a permutation or a semiconstant transformation (an idempotent
with one point of contraction) unless all letters are of the first type. We
propose and discuss two conjectures about possible more general
characterizations.Comment: Note: The weak variant of our conjecture in a stronger form has been
recently solved by Mikhail Volkov arXiv:2306.13317, together with several new
results concerning our proble
Parameterized Complexity of Synchronization and Road Coloring
First, we close the multivariate analysis of a canonical problem concerning
short reset words (SYN), as it was started by Fernau et al. (2013). Namely, we
prove that the problem, parameterized by the number of states, does not admit a
polynomial kernel unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses. Second, we
consider a related canonical problem concerning synchronizing road colorings
(SRCP). Here we give a similar complete multivariate analysis. Namely, we show
that the problem, parameterized by the number of states, admits a polynomial
kernel and we close the previous research of restrictions to particular values
of both the alphabet size and the maximum word length
Complexity of Preimage Problems for Deterministic Finite Automata
Given a subset of states S of a deterministic finite automaton and a word w, the preimage is the subset of all states that are mapped to a state from S by the action of w. We study the computational complexity of three problems related to the existence of words yielding certain preimages, which are especially motivated by the theory of synchronizing automata. The first problem is whether, for a given subset, there exists a word extending the subset (giving a larger preimage). The second problem is whether there exists a word totally extending the subset (giving the whole set of states) - it is equivalent to the problem whether there exists an avoiding word for the complementary subset. The third problem is whether there exists a word resizing the subset (giving a preimage of a different size). We also consider the variants of the problem where an upper bound on the length of the word is given in the input. Because in most cases our problems are computationally hard, we additionally consider parametrized complexity by the size of the given subset. We focus on the most interesting cases that are the subclasses of strongly connected, synchronizing, and binary automata
LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume
LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum