49 research outputs found
The Complexity of Knapsack Problems in Wreath Products
We prove new complexity results for computational problems in certain wreath
products of groups and (as an application) for free solvable group. For a
finitely generated group we study the so-called power word problem (does a
given expression , where are
words over the group generators and are binary encoded
integers, evaluate to the group identity?) and knapsack problem (does a given
equation , where are words
over the group generators and are variables, has a solution in
the natural numbers). We prove that the power word problem for wreath products
of the form with nilpotent and iterated wreath products
of free abelian groups belongs to . As an application of the
latter, the power word problem for free solvable groups is in .
On the other hand we show that for wreath products , where
is a so called uniformly strongly efficiently non-solvable group (which
form a large subclass of non-solvable groups), the power word problem is
-hard. For the knapsack problem we show
-completeness for iterated wreath products of free abelian groups
and hence free solvable groups. Moreover, the knapsack problem for every wreath
product , where is uniformly efficiently non-solvable, is
-hard
How hard is it to verify flat affine counter systems with the finite monoid property ?
We study several decision problems for counter systems with guards defined by
convex polyhedra and updates defined by affine transformations. In general, the
reachability problem is undecidable for such systems. Decidability can be
achieved by imposing two restrictions: (i) the control structure of the counter
system is flat, meaning that nested loops are forbidden, and (ii) the set of
matrix powers is finite, for any affine update matrix in the system. We provide
tight complexity bounds for several decision problems of such systems, by
proving that reachability and model checking for Past Linear Temporal Logic are
complete for the second level of the polynomial hierarchy , while
model checking for First Order Logic is PSPACE-complete
Rational subsets of Baumslag-Solitar groups
We consider the rational subset membership problem for Baumslag-Solitar
groups. These groups form a prominent class in the area of algorithmic group
theory, and they were recently identified as an obstacle for understanding the
rational subsets of .
We show that rational subset membership for Baumslag-Solitar groups
with is decidable and PSPACE-complete. To this end,
we introduce a word representation of the elements of : their
pointed expansion (PE), an annotated -ary expansion. Seeing subsets of
as word languages, this leads to a natural notion of
PE-regular subsets of : these are the subsets of
whose sets of PE are regular languages. Our proof shows that
every rational subset of is PE-regular.
Since the class of PE-regular subsets of is well-equipped
with closure properties, we obtain further applications of these results. Our
results imply that (i) emptiness of Boolean combinations of rational subsets is
decidable, (ii) membership to each fixed rational subset of is
decidable in logarithmic space, and (iii) it is decidable whether a given
rational subset is recognizable. In particular, it is decidable whether a given
finitely generated subgroup of has finite index.Comment: Long version of paper with same title appearing in ICALP'2
DESCRIPTIONAL COMPLEXITY AND PARIKH EQUIVALENCE
The thesis deals with some topics in the theory of formal languages and automata. Speci\ufb01cally, the thesis deals with the theory of context-free languages and the study of their descriptional complexity.
The descriptional complexity of a formal structure (e.g., grammar, model of automata, etc) is the number of symbols needed to write down its description. While this aspect is extensively treated in regular languages, as evidenced by numerous references, in the case of context-free languages few results are known.
An important result in this area is the Parikh\u2019s theorem. The theorem states that for each context-free language there exists a regular language with the same Parikh image. Given an alphabet \u3a3 = {a1, . . . , am}, the Parikh image is a function \u3c8 : \u3a3^ 17\u2192 N^m that associates with each word w 08\u3a3^ 17, the vector \u3c8(w)=(|w|_a1, |w|_a2, . . . , |w|_am), where |w|_ai is the number of occurrences of ai in w. The Parikh image of a language L 86\u3a3^ 17 is the set of Parikh images of its words. For instance, the language {a^nb^n | n 65 0} has the same Parikh image as (ab)^ 17. Roughly speaking, the theorem shows that if the order of the letters in a word is disregarded, retaining only the number of their occurrences, then context-free languages are indistinguishable from regular languages.
Due to the interesting theoretical property of the Parikh\u2019s theorem, the goal of this thesis is to study some aspects of descriptional complexity according to Parikh equivalence. In particular, we investigate the conversion of one-way nondeterministic \ufb01nite automata and context-free grammars into Parikh equivalent one-way and two-way deterministic \ufb01nite automata, from a descriptional complexity point of view.
We prove that for each one-way nondeterministic automaton with n states there exist Parikh equivalent one-way and two-way deterministic automata with e^O(sqrt(n lnn)) and p(n) states, respectively, where p(n) is a polynomial. Furthermore, these costs are tight. In contrast, if all the words accepted by the given one-way nondeterministic automaton contain at least two different letters, then a Parikh equivalent one-way deterministic automaton with a polynomial number of states can be found.
Concerning context-free grammars, we prove that for each grammar in Chomsky normal form with h variables there exist Parikh equivalent one-way and two-way deterministic automata with 2^O(h^2 ) and 2^O(h) states, respectively. Even these bounds are tight.
A further investigation is the study under Parikh equivalence of the state complexity of some language operations which preserve regularity. For union, concatenation, Kleene star, complement, intersection, shuffle, and reversal, we obtain a polynomial state complexity over any \ufb01xed alphabet, in contrast to the intrinsic exponential state complexity of some of these operations in the classical version. For projection we prove a superpolynomial state complexity, which is lower than the exponential one of the corresponding classical operation. We also prove that for each two one-way deterministic automata A and B it is possible to obtain a one-way deterministic automaton with a polynomial number of states whose accepted language has as Parikh image the intersection of the Parikh images of the languages accepted by A and B