4,286 research outputs found
Weak Cost Register Automata are Still Powerful
We consider one of the weakest variants of cost register automata over a
tropical semiring, namely copyless cost register automata over
with updates using and increments. We show that this model can simulate,
in some sense, the runs of counter machines with zero-tests. We deduce that a
number of problems pertaining to that model are undecidable, in particular
equivalence, disproving a conjecture of Alur et al. from 2012. To emphasize how
weak these machines are, we also show that they can be expressed as a
restricted form of linearly-ambiguous weighted automata.Comment: 16 page
Computation with narrow CTCs
We examine some variants of computation with closed timelike curves (CTCs),
where various restrictions are imposed on the memory of the computer, and the
information carrying capacity and range of the CTC. We give full
characterizations of the classes of languages recognized by polynomial time
probabilistic and quantum computers that can send a single classical bit to
their own past. Such narrow CTCs are demonstrated to add the power of limited
nondeterminism to deterministic computers, and lead to exponential speedup in
constant-space probabilistic and quantum computation. We show that, given a
time machine with constant negative delay, one can implement CTC-based
computations without the need to know about the runtime beforehand.Comment: 16 pages. A few typo was correcte
A Robust Class of Linear Recurrence Sequences
We introduce a subclass of linear recurrence sequences which we call poly-rational sequences because they are denoted by rational expressions closed under sum and product. We show that this class is robust by giving several characterisations: polynomially ambiguous weighted automata, copyless cost-register automata, rational formal series, and linear recurrence sequences whose eigenvalues are roots of rational numbers
In the Maze of Data Languages
In data languages the positions of strings and trees carry a label from a
finite alphabet and a data value from an infinite alphabet. Extensions of
automata and logics over finite alphabets have been defined to recognize data
languages, both in the string and tree cases. In this paper we describe and
compare the complexity and expressiveness of such models to understand which
ones are better candidates as regular models
Is there a physically universal cellular automaton or Hamiltonian?
It is known that both quantum and classical cellular automata (CA) exist that
are computationally universal in the sense that they can simulate, after
appropriate initialization, any quantum or classical computation, respectively.
Here we introduce a different notion of universality: a CA is called physically
universal if every transformation on any finite region can be (approximately)
implemented by the autonomous time evolution of the system after the complement
of the region has been initialized in an appropriate way. We pose the question
of whether physically universal CAs exist. Such CAs would provide a model of
the world where the boundary between a physical system and its controller can
be consistently shifted, in analogy to the Heisenberg cut for the quantum
measurement problem. We propose to study the thermodynamic cost of computation
and control within such a model because implementing a cyclic process on a
microsystem may require a non-cyclic process for its controller, whereas
implementing a cyclic process on system and controller may require the
implementation of a non-cyclic process on a "meta"-controller, and so on.
Physically universal CAs avoid this infinite hierarchy of controllers and the
cost of implementing cycles on a subsystem can be described by mixing
properties of the CA dynamics. We define a physical prior on the CA
configurations by applying the dynamics to an initial state where half of the
CA is in the maximum entropy state and half of it is in the all-zero state
(thus reflecting the fact that life requires non-equilibrium states like the
boundary between a hold and a cold reservoir). As opposed to Solomonoff's
prior, our prior does not only account for the Kolmogorov complexity but also
for the cost of isolating the system during the state preparation if the
preparation process is not robust.Comment: 27 pages, 1 figur
Local Unitary Quantum Cellular Automata
In this paper we present a quantization of Cellular Automata. Our formalism
is based on a lattice of qudits, and an update rule consisting of local unitary
operators that commute with their own lattice translations. One purpose of this
model is to act as a theoretical model of quantum computation, similar to the
quantum circuit model. It is also shown to be an appropriate abstraction for
space-homogeneous quantum phenomena, such as quantum lattice gases, spin chains
and others. Some results that show the benefits of basing the model on local
unitary operators are shown: universality, strong connections to the circuit
model, simple implementation on quantum hardware, and a wealth of applications.Comment: To appear in Physical Review
Exponential Separation of Quantum and Classical Online Space Complexity
Although quantum algorithms realizing an exponential time speed-up over the
best known classical algorithms exist, no quantum algorithm is known performing
computation using less space resources than classical algorithms. In this
paper, we study, for the first time explicitly, space-bounded quantum
algorithms for computational problems where the input is given not as a whole,
but bit by bit. We show that there exist such problems that a quantum computer
can solve using exponentially less work space than a classical computer. More
precisely, we introduce a very natural and simple model of a space-bounded
quantum online machine and prove an exponential separation of classical and
quantum online space complexity, in the bounded-error setting and for a total
language. The language we consider is inspired by a communication problem (the
set intersection function) that Buhrman, Cleve and Wigderson used to show an
almost quadratic separation of quantum and classical bounded-error
communication complexity. We prove that, in the framework of online space
complexity, the separation becomes exponential.Comment: 13 pages. v3: minor change
History-Register Automata
Programs with dynamic allocation are able to create and use an unbounded
number of fresh resources, such as references, objects, files, etc. We propose
History-Register Automata (HRA), a new automata-theoretic formalism for
modelling such programs. HRAs extend the expressiveness of previous approaches
and bring us to the limits of decidability for reachability checks. The
distinctive feature of our machines is their use of unbounded memory sets
(histories) where input symbols can be selectively stored and compared with
symbols to follow. In addition, stored symbols can be consumed or deleted by
reset. We show that the combination of consumption and reset capabilities
renders the automata powerful enough to imitate counter machines, and yields
closure under all regular operations apart from complementation. We moreover
examine weaker notions of HRAs which strike different balances between
expressiveness and effectiveness.Comment: LMCS (improved version of FoSSaCS
- âŠ