The state complexity of random DFAs

The state complexity of a Deterministic Finite-state automaton (DFA) is the number of states in its minimal equivalent DFA. We study the state complexity of random $n$-state DFAs over a $k$-symbol alphabet, drawn uniformly from the set $[n]^{[n]\times[k]}\times2^{[n]}$ of all such automata. We show that, with high probability, the latter is $\alpha_k n + O(\sqrt n\log n)$ for a certain explicit constant $\alpha_k$

Ergodicity of Random Walks on Random DFA

Given a DFA we consider the random walk that starts at the initial state and at each time step moves to a new state by taking a random transition from the current state. This paper shows that for typical DFA this random walk induces an ergodic Markov chain. The notion of typical DFA is formalized by showing that ergodicity holds with high probability when a DFA is sampled uniformly at random from the set of all automata with a fixed number of states. We also show the same result applies to DFA obtained by minimizing typical DFA

Diameter and Stationary Distribution of Random rr-out Digraphs

Let $D(n,r)$ be a random $r$-out regular directed multigraph on the set of vertices $\{1,\ldots,n\}$. In this work, we establish that for every $r \ge 2$, there exists $\eta_r>0$ such that $\text{diam}(D(n,r))=(1+\eta_r+o(1))\log_r{n}$. Our techniques also allow us to bound some extremal quantities related to the stationary distribution of a simple random walk on $D(n,r)$. In particular, we determine the asymptotic behaviour of $\pi_{\max}$ and $\pi_{\min}$, the maximum and the minimum values of the stationary distribution. We show that with high probability $\pi_{\max} = n^{-1+o(1)}$ and $\pi_{\min}=n^{-(1+\eta_r)+o(1)}$. Our proof shows that the vertices with $\pi(v)$ near to $\pi_{\min}$ lie at the top of "narrow, slippery towers", such vertices are also responsible for increasing the diameter from $(1+o(1))\log_r n$ to $(1+\eta_r+o(1))\log_r{n}$.Comment: 31 page