Logspace Computations in Coxeter Groups and Graph Groups

Computing normal forms in groups (or monoids) is in general harder than solving the word problem (equality testing). However, normal form computation has a much wider range of applications. It is therefore interesting to investigate the complexity of computing normal forms for important classes of groups. For Coxeter groups we show that the following algorithmic tasks can be solved by a deterministic Turing machine using logarithmic work space, only: 1. Compute the length of any geodesic normal form. 2. Compute the set of letters occurring in any geodesic normal form. 3. Compute the Parikh-image of any geodesic normal form in case that all defining relations have even length (i.e., in even Coxeter groups.) 4. For right-angled Coxeter groups we can do actually compute the short length normal form in logspace. (Note that short length normal forms are geodesic.) Next, we apply the results to right-angled Artin groups. They are also known as free partially commutative groups or as graph groups. As a consequence of our result on right-angled Coxeter groups we show that shortlex normal forms in graph groups can be computed in logspace, too. Graph groups play an important role in group theory, and they have a close connection to concurrency theory. As an application of our results we show that the word problem for free partially commutative inverse monoids is in logspace. This result generalizes a result of Ondrusch and the third author on free inverse monoids. Concurrent systems which are deterministic and co-deterministic can be studied via inverse monoids.Comment: An extended abstract of this paper appears in Proceedings of LATIN 201

Languages of Dot-depth One over Infinite Words

Over finite words, languages of dot-depth one are expressively complete for alternation-free first-order logic. This fragment is also known as the Boolean closure of existential first-order logic. Here, the atomic formulas comprise order, successor, minimum, and maximum predicates. Knast (1983) has shown that it is decidable whether a language has dot-depth one. We extend Knast's result to infinite words. In particular, we describe the class of languages definable in alternation-free first-order logic over infinite words, and we give an effective characterization of this fragment. This characterization has two components. The first component is identical to Knast's algebraic property for finite words and the second component is a topological property, namely being a Boolean combination of Cantor sets. As an intermediate step we consider finite and infinite words simultaneously. We then obtain the results for infinite words as well as for finite words as special cases. In particular, we give a new proof of Knast's Theorem on languages of dot-depth one over finite words.Comment: Presented at LICS 201

Construction of a cms on a given cpo

In dealing with denotational semantics of programming languages partial orders resp. metric spaces have been used with great benefit in order to provide a meaning to recursive and repetitive constructs. This paper presents two methods to define a metric on a subset M of a cpo D such that M is a complete metric spaces and the metric semantics on M coincides with the cpo semantics on D when the same semantic operators are used. The first method is to add a 'length' on a cpo which means a function ρ : D → IN 0 ∪{∞} of increasing power. The second is based on the ideas of [9] and uses pseudo rank orderings, i.e. monotone sequences of monotone functions ϖn : D → D. We show that SFP domains can be characterized as special kinds of rank orderded cpo's. We also discuss the connection between the Lawson topology and the topology induced by the metric

Fragments of first-order logic over infinite words

We give topological and algebraic characterizations as well as language theoretic descriptions of the following subclasses of first-order logic FO[<] for omega-languages: Sigma_2, FO^2, the intersection of FO^2 and Sigma_2, and Delta_2 (and by duality Pi_2 and the intersection of FO^2 and Pi_2). These descriptions extend the respective results for finite words. In particular, we relate the above fragments to language classes of certain (unambiguous) polynomials. An immediate consequence is the decidability of the membership problem of these classes, but this was shown before by Wilke and Bojanczyk and is therefore not our main focus. The paper is about the interplay of algebraic, topological, and language theoretic properties.Comment: Conference version presented at 26th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, STACS 200

Graph products of spheres, associative graded algebras and Hilbert series

Given a finite, simple, vertex-weighted graph, we construct a graded associative (non-commutative) algebra, whose generators correspond to vertices and whose ideal of relations has generators that are graded commutators corresponding to edges. We show that the Hilbert series of this algebra is the inverse of the clique polynomial of the graph. Using this result it easy to recognize if the ideal is inert, from which strong results on the algebra follow. Non-commutative Grobner bases play an important role in our proof. There is an interesting application to toric topology. This algebra arises naturally from a partial product of spheres, which is a special case of a generalized moment-angle complex. We apply our result to the loop-space homology of this space.Comment: 19 pages, v3: elaborated on connections to related work, added more citations, to appear in Mathematische Zeitschrif

On Infinite Real Trace Rational Languages of Maximum Topological Complexity

We consider the set of infinite real traces, over a dependence alphabet (Gamma, D) with no isolated letter, equipped with the topology induced by the prefix metric. We then prove that all rational languages of infinite real traces are analytic sets and that there exist some rational languages of infinite real traces which are analytic but non Borel sets, and even Sigma^1_1-complete, hence of maximum possible topological complexity

On distributed monitoring of asynchronous systems

Distributed systems are notoriously difficult to understand and analyze in order to assert their correction w.r.t. given properties. They often exhibit a huge number of different behaviors, as soon as the active entities (peers, agents, processes, etc) behave in an asynchronous manner. Already the modelization of such systems is a non-trivial task, let alone their formal verification. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the problem of distributed monitoring on a simple model of finite-state distributed automata based on shared actions, called asynchronous automata. Monitoring is a question related to runtime verification: assume that we have to check a property $L$ against an unknown or very complex system $A$, so that classical static analysis is not possible. Therefore instead of model-checking a monitor is used, that checks the property on the underlying system at runtime. We are interested here in monitoring distributed systems modeled as asynchronous automata. It is natural to require that monitors should be of the same kind as the underlying system, so we consider here distributed monitoring. A distributed monitor does not have a global view of the system, therefore we propose the notion of locally monitorable trace language. Our main result shows that if the distributed alphabet of actions is connected and if $L$ is a set of infinite traces such that both $L$ and its complement $L^c$ are countable unions of locally safety languages, then $L$ is locally monitorable. We also show that over infinite traces, recognizable countable unions of locally safety languages are precisely the complements of deterministic languages.Comment: Paper appears as an invited lecture at WoLLIC 2012, 19th Workshop on Logic, Language, Information and Computation. September 3rd to 6th, 2012 University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentin

Finite transducers for divisibility monoids

Divisibility monoids are a natural lattice-theoretical generalization of Mazurkiewicz trace monoids, namely monoids in which the distributivity of the involved divisibility lattices is kept as an hypothesis, but the relations between the generators are not supposed to necessarily be commutations. Here, we show that every divisibility monoid admits an explicit finite transducer which allows to compute normal forms in quadratic time. In addition, we prove that every divisibility monoid is biautomatic.Comment: 20 page

The Complexity of Dynamic Data Race Prediction

Writing concurrent programs is notoriously hard due to scheduling non-determinism. The most common concurrency bugs are data races, which are accesses to a shared resource that can be executed concurrently. Dynamic data-race prediction is the most standard technique for detecting data races: given an observed, data-race-free trace $t$, the task is to determine whether $t$ can be reordered to a trace $t^*$ that exposes a data-race. Although the problem has received significant practical attention for over three decades, its complexity has remained elusive. In this work, we address this lacuna, identifying sources of intractability and conditions under which the problem is efficiently solvable. Given a trace $t$ of size $n$ over $k$ threads, our main results are as follows. First, we establish a general $O(k\cdot n^{2\cdot (k-1)})$ upper-bound, as well as an $O(n^k)$ upper-bound when certain parameters of $t$ are constant. In addition, we show that the problem is NP-hard and even W[1]-hard parameterized by $k$, and thus unlikely to be fixed-parameter tractable. Second, we study the problem over acyclic communication topologies, such as server-clients hierarchies. We establish an $O(k^2\cdot d\cdot n^2\cdot \log n)$ upper-bound, where $d$ is the number of shared variables accessed in $t$. In addition, we show that even for traces with $k=2$ threads, the problem has no $O(n^{2-\epsilon})$ algorithm under Orthogonal Vectors. Since any trace with 2 threads defines an acyclic topology, our upper-bound for this case is optimal wrt polynomial improvements for up to moderate values of $k$ and $d$. Finally, we study a distance-bounded version of the problem, where the task is to expose a data race by a witness trace that is similar to $t$. We develop an algorithm that works in $O(n)$ time when certain parameters of $t$ are constant

Fixed points of endomorphisms of trace monoids

It is proved that the fixed point submonoid and the periodic point submonoid of a trace monoid endomorphism are always finitely generated. Considering the Foata normal form metric on trace monoids and uniformly continuous endomorphisms, a finiteness theorem is proved for the infinite fixed points of the continuous extension to real traces