121 research outputs found
Branching Bisimilarity of Normed BPA Processes is in NEXPTIME
Branching bisimilarity on normed BPA processes was recently shown to be
decidable by Yuxi Fu (ICALP 2013) but his proof has not provided any upper
complexity bound. We present a simpler approach based on relative prime
decompositions that leads to a nondeterministic exponential-time algorithm;
this is close to the known exponential-time lower bound.Comment: This is the same text as in July 2014, but only with some
acknowledgment added due to administrative need
Partially-commutative context-free languages
The paper is about a class of languages that extends context-free languages
(CFL) and is stable under shuffle. Specifically, we investigate the class of
partially-commutative context-free languages (PCCFL), where non-terminal
symbols are commutative according to a binary independence relation, very much
like in trace theory. The class has been recently proposed as a robust class
subsuming CFL and commutative CFL. This paper surveys properties of PCCFL. We
identify a natural corresponding automaton model: stateless multi-pushdown
automata. We show stability of the class under natural operations, including
homomorphic images and shuffle. Finally, we relate expressiveness of PCCFL to
two other relevant classes: CFL extended with shuffle and trace-closures of
CFL. Among technical contributions of the paper are pumping lemmas, as an
elegant completion of known pumping properties of regular languages, CFL and
commutative CFL.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2012, arXiv:1208.244
A Characterization for Decidable Separability by Piecewise Testable Languages
The separability problem for word languages of a class by
languages of a class asks, for two given languages and
from , whether there exists a language from that
includes and excludes , that is, and . In this work, we assume some mild closure properties for
and study for which such classes separability by a piecewise
testable language (PTL) is decidable. We characterize these classes in terms of
decidability of (two variants of) an unboundedness problem. From this, we
deduce that separability by PTL is decidable for a number of language classes,
such as the context-free languages and languages of labeled vector addition
systems. Furthermore, it follows that separability by PTL is decidable if and
only if one can compute for any language of the class its downward closure wrt.
the scattered substring ordering (i.e., if the set of scattered substrings of
any language of the class is effectively regular).
The obtained decidability results contrast some undecidability results. In
fact, for all (non-regular) language classes that we present as examples with
decidable separability, it is undecidable whether a given language is a PTL
itself.
Our characterization involves a result of independent interest, which states
that for any kind of languages and , non-separability by PTL is
equivalent to the existence of common patterns in and
Deciding Definability by Deterministic Regular Expressions
International audienceWe investigate the complexity of deciding whether a given regular language can be defined with a deterministic regular expression. Our main technical result shows that the problem is Pspace-complete if the input language is represented as a regular expression or nondeterministic finite automaton. The problem becomes Expspace-complete if the language is represented as a regular expression with counters
An Approach to Regular Separability in Vector Addition Systems
We study the problem of regular separability of languages of vector addition
systems with states (VASS). It asks whether for two given VASS languages K and
L, there exists a regular language R that includes K and is disjoint from L.
While decidability of the problem in full generality remains an open question,
there are several subclasses for which decidability has been shown: It is
decidable for (i) one-dimensional VASS, (ii) VASS coverability languages, (iii)
languages of integer VASS, and (iv) commutative VASS languages. We propose a
general approach to deciding regular separability. We use it to decide regular
separability of an arbitrary VASS language from any language in the classes
(i), (ii), and (iii). This generalizes all previous results, including (iv)
New Lower Bounds for Reachability in Vector Addition Systems
We investigate the dimension-parametric complexity of the reachability
problem in vector addition systems with states (VASS) and its extension with
pushdown stack (pushdown VASS). Up to now, the problem is known to be
-hard for VASS of dimension (the complexity class
corresponds to the th level of the fast-growing hierarchy),
and no essentially better bound is known for pushdown VASS. We provide a new
construction that improves the lower bound for VASS: -hardness
in dimension . Furthermore, building on our new insights we show a new
lower bound for pushdown VASS: -hardness in dimension . This dimension-parametric lower bound is strictly stronger than the upper
bound for VASS, which suggests that the (still unknown) complexity of the
reachability problem in pushdown VASS is higher than in plain VASS (where it is
Ackermann-complete)
Reachability in fixed dimension vector addition systems with states
The reachability problem is a central decision problem in verification of vector addition systems with states (VASS). In spite of recent progress, the complexity of the reachability problem remains unsettled, and it is closely related to the lengths of shortest VASS runs that witness reachability. We obtain three main results for VASS of fixed dimension. For the first two, we assume that the integers in the input are given in unary, and that the control graph of the given VASS is flat (i.e., without nested cycles). We obtain a family of VASS in dimension 3 whose shortest runs are exponential, and we show that the reachability problem is NP-hard in dimension 7. These results resolve negatively questions that had been posed by the works of Blondin et al. in LICS 2015 and Englert et al. in LICS 2016, and contribute a first construction that distinguishes 3-dimensional flat VASS from 2-dimensional ones. Our third result, by means of a novel family of products of integer fractions, shows that 4-dimensional VASS can have doubly exponentially long shortest runs. The smallest dimension for which this was previously known is 14
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