Universal Witnesses for State Complexity of Basic Operations Combined with Reversal

We study the state complexity of boolean operations, concatenation and star with one or two of the argument languages reversed. We derive tight upper bounds for the symmetric differences and differences of such languages. We prove that the previously discovered bounds for union, intersection, concatenation and star of such languages can all be met by the recently introduced universal witnesses and their variants.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures. LNCS forma

Symmetric Groups and Quotient Complexity of Boolean Operations

The quotient complexity of a regular language L is the number of left quotients of L, which is the same as the state complexity of L. Suppose that L and L' are binary regular languages with quotient complexities m and n, and that the transition semigroups of the minimal deterministic automata accepting L and L' are the symmetric groups S_m and S_n of degrees m and n, respectively. Denote by o any binary boolean operation that is not a constant and not a function of one argument only. For m,n >= 2 with (m,n) not in {(2,2),(3,4),(4,3),(4,4)} we prove that the quotient complexity of LoL' is mn if and only either (a) m is not equal to n or (b) m=n and the bases (ordered pairs of generators) of S_m and S_n are not conjugate. For (m,n)\in {(2,2),(3,4),(4,3),(4,4)} we give examples to show that this need not hold. In proving these results we generalize the notion of uniform minimality to direct products of automata. We also establish a non-trivial connection between complexity of boolean operations and group theory

In Search Of Most Complex Regular Languages

Electronic version of an article published as International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science, 24(06), 2013, 691–708. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0129054113400133 © World Scientific Publishing Company http://www.worldscientific.com/Sequences (L-n vertical bar n >= k), called streams, of regular languages L-n are considered, where k is some small positive integer, n is the state complexity of L-n, and the languages in a stream differ only in the parameter n, but otherwise, have the same properties. The following measures of complexity are proposed for any stream: (1) the state complexity n of L-n, that is the number of left quotients of L-n (used as a reference); (2) the state complexities of the left, quotients of L-n; (3) the number of atoms of L-n; (4) the state complexities of the atoms of L-n; (5) the size of the syntactic semigroup of L; and the state complexities of the following operations: (6) the reverse of L-n; (7) the star; (8) union, intersection, difference and symmetric difference of and L-n; and the concatenation of L-m and L-n. A stream that has the highest possible complexity with respect to these measures is then viewed as a most complex stream. The language stream (U-n (a, b, c) vertical bar n >= 3 is defined by the deterministic finite automaton with state set {0, 1, ..., n-1}, initial state 0, set {n-1} of final states, and input alphabet {a, b, c}, where a performs a cyclic permutation of the;a states, b transposes states 0 and 1, and c maps state n - 1 to state 0. This stream achieves the highest possible complexities with the exception of boolean operations where m = n. In the latter case, one can use U-n (a, b, c) and U-n(a, b, c), where the roles of a and b are interchanged in the second language. In this sense, U-n (a, b, c) is a universal witness This witness and its extensions also apply to a large number of combined regular operations.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [OGP0000871