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Documents authored by Thejaswini, K. S.

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.30
Finding Equilibria: Simpler for Pessimists, Simplest for Optimists

Authors: Léonard Brice, Thomas A. Henzinger, and K. S. Thejaswini

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 345, 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)

Abstract
We consider equilibria in multiplayer stochastic graph games with terminal-node rewards. In such games, Nash equilibria are defined assuming that each player seeks to maximise their expected payoff, ignoring their aversion or tolerance to risk. We therefore study risk-sensitive equilibria (RSEs), where the expected payoff is replaced by a risk measure. A classical risk measure in the literature is the entropic risk measure, where each player has a real valued parameter capturing their risk-averseness. We introduce the extreme risk measure, which corresponds to extreme cases of entropic risk measure, where players are either extreme optimists or extreme pessimists. Under extreme risk measure, every player is an extremist: an extreme optimist perceives their reward as the maximum payoff that can be achieved with positive probability, while an extreme pessimist expects the minimum payoff achievable with positive probability. We argue that the extreme risk measure, especially in multi-player graph based settings, is particularly relevant as they can model several real life instances such as interactions between secure systems and potential security threats, or distributed controls for safety critical systems. We prove that RSEs defined with the extreme risk measure are guaranteed to exist when all rewards are non-negative. Furthermore, we prove that the problem of deciding whether a given game contains an RSE that generates risk measures within specified intervals is decidable and NP-complete for our extreme risk measure, and even PTIME-complete when all players are extreme optimists, while that same problem is undecidable using the entropic risk measure or even the classical expected payoff. This establishes, to our knowledge, the first decidable fragment for equilibria in simple stochastic games without restrictions on strategy types or number of players.
Cite as

Léonard Brice, Thomas A. Henzinger, and K. S. Thejaswini. Finding Equilibria: Simpler for Pessimists, Simplest for Optimists. In 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 345, pp. 30:1-30:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{brice_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.30,
  author =	{Brice, L\'{e}onard and Henzinger, Thomas A. and Thejaswini, K. S.},
  title =	{{Finding Equilibria: Simpler for Pessimists, Simplest for Optimists}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)},
  pages =	{30:1--30:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-388-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{345},
  editor =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Mazowiecki, Filip and Skrzypczak, Micha{\l}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.30},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-241371},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.30},
  annote =	{Keywords: Nash equilibria, stochastic games, graph games, risk-sensitive equilibria}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.57
Resolving Nondeterminism with Randomness

Authors: Thomas A. Henzinger, Aditya Prakash, and K. S. Thejaswini

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 345, 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)

Abstract
We define and study classes of ω-regular automata for which the nondeterminism can be resolved by a policy that uses a combination of memory and randomness on any input word, based solely on the prefix read so far. We examine two settings for providing the input word to an automaton. In the first setting, called adversarial resolvability, the input word is constructed letter-by-letter by an adversary, dependent on the resolver’s previous decisions. In the second setting, called stochastic resolvability, the adversary pre-commits to an infinite word and reveals it letter-by-letter. In each setting, we require the existence of an almost-sure resolver, i.e., a policy that ensures that as long as the adversary provides a word in the language of the underlying nondeterministic automaton, the run constructed by the policy is accepting with probability 1. The class of automata that are adversarially resolvable is the well-studied class of history-deterministic automata. The case of stochastically resolvable automata, on the other hand, defines a novel class. Restricting the class of resolvers in both settings to stochastic policies without memory introduces two additional new classes of automata. We show that the new automata classes offer interesting trade-offs between succinctness, expressivity, and computational complexity, providing a fine gradation between deterministic automata and nondeterministic automata.
Cite as

Thomas A. Henzinger, Aditya Prakash, and K. S. Thejaswini. Resolving Nondeterminism with Randomness. In 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 345, pp. 57:1-57:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{henzinger_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.57,
  author =	{Henzinger, Thomas A. and Prakash, Aditya and Thejaswini, K. S.},
  title =	{{Resolving Nondeterminism with Randomness}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)},
  pages =	{57:1--57:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-388-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{345},
  editor =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Mazowiecki, Filip and Skrzypczak, Micha{\l}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.57},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-241645},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.57},
  annote =	{Keywords: \omega-regular languages, History determinism, Stochastic strategies}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2022.44
A Technique to Speed up Symmetric Attractor-Based Algorithms for Parity Games

Authors: K. S. Thejaswini, Pierre Ohlmann, and Marcin Jurdziński

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 250, 42nd IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2022)

Abstract
The classic McNaughton-Zielonka algorithm for solving parity games has excellent performance in practice, but its worst-case asymptotic complexity is worse than that of the state-of-the-art algorithms. This work pinpoints the mechanism that is responsible for this relative underperformance and proposes a new technique that eliminates it. The culprit is the wasteful manner in which the results obtained from recursive calls are indiscriminately discarded by the algorithm whenever subgames on which the algorithm is run change. Our new technique is based on firstly enhancing the algorithm to compute attractor decompositions of subgames instead of just winning strategies on them, and then on making it carefully use attractor decompositions computed in prior recursive calls to reduce the size of subgames on which further recursive calls are made. We illustrate the new technique on the classic example of the recursive McNaughton-Zielonka algorithm, but it can be applied to other symmetric attractor-based algorithms that were inspired by it, such as the quasi-polynomial versions of the McNaughton-Zielonka algorithm based on universal trees.
Cite as

K. S. Thejaswini, Pierre Ohlmann, and Marcin Jurdziński. A Technique to Speed up Symmetric Attractor-Based Algorithms for Parity Games. In 42nd IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 250, pp. 44:1-44:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)

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@InProceedings{thejaswini_et_al:LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2022.44,
  author =	{Thejaswini, K. S. and Ohlmann, Pierre and Jurdzi\'{n}ski, Marcin},
  title =	{{A Technique to Speed up Symmetric Attractor-Based Algorithms for Parity Games}},
  booktitle =	{42nd IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2022)},
  pages =	{44:1--44:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-261-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2022},
  volume =	{250},
  editor =	{Dawar, Anuj and Guruswami, Venkatesan},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2022.44},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-174365},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2022.44},
  annote =	{Keywords: Parity games, Attractor decomposition, Quasipolynomial Algorithms, Universal trees}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2021.17
Adaptive Synchronisation of Pushdown Automata

Authors: A. R. Balasubramanian and K. S. Thejaswini

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 203, 32nd International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2021)

Abstract
We introduce the notion of adaptive synchronisation for pushdown automata, in which there is an external observer who has no knowledge about the current state of the pushdown automaton, but can observe the contents of the stack. The observer would then like to decide if it is possible to bring the automaton from any state into some predetermined state by giving inputs to it in an adaptive manner, i.e., the next input letter to be given can depend on how the contents of the stack changed after the current input letter. We show that for non-deterministic pushdown automata, this problem is 2-EXPTIME-complete and for deterministic pushdown automata, we show EXPTIME-completeness. To prove the lower bounds, we first introduce (different variants of) subset-synchronisation and show that these problems are polynomial-time equivalent with the adaptive synchronisation problem. We then prove hardness results for the subset-synchronisation problems. For proving the upper bounds, we consider the problem of deciding if a given alternating pushdown system has an accepting run with at most k leaves and we provide an n^O(k²) time algorithm for this problem.
Cite as

A. R. Balasubramanian and K. S. Thejaswini. Adaptive Synchronisation of Pushdown Automata. In 32nd International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 203, pp. 17:1-17:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

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@InProceedings{balasubramanian_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2021.17,
  author =	{Balasubramanian, A. R. and Thejaswini, K. S.},
  title =	{{Adaptive Synchronisation of Pushdown Automata}},
  booktitle =	{32nd International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2021)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-203-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2021},
  volume =	{203},
  editor =	{Haddad, Serge and Varacca, Daniele},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2021.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-143948},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2021.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: Adaptive synchronisation, Pushdown automata, Alternating pushdown systems}
}
Document
Track B: Automata, Logic, Semantics, and Theory of Programming
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2020.123
The Strahler Number of a Parity Game

Authors: Laure Daviaud, Marcin Jurdziński, and K. S. Thejaswini

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 168, 47th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2020)

Abstract
The Strahler number of a rooted tree is the largest height of a perfect binary tree that is its minor. The Strahler number of a parity game is proposed to be defined as the smallest Strahler number of the tree of any of its attractor decompositions. It is proved that parity games can be solved in quasi-linear space and in time that is polynomial in the number of vertices n and linear in (d/(2k))^k, where d is the number of priorities and k is the Strahler number. This complexity is quasi-polynomial because the Strahler number is at most logarithmic in the number of vertices. The proof is based on a new construction of small Strahler-universal trees. It is shown that the Strahler number of a parity game is a robust, and hence arguably natural, parameter: it coincides with its alternative version based on trees of progress measures and - remarkably - with the register number defined by Lehtinen (2018). It follows that parity games can be solved in quasi-linear space and in time that is polynomial in the number of vertices and linear in (d/(2k))^k, where k is the register number. This significantly improves the running times and space achieved for parity games of bounded register number by Lehtinen (2018) and by Parys (2020). The running time of the algorithm based on small Strahler-universal trees yields a novel trade-off k ⋅ lg(d/k) = O(log n) between the two natural parameters that measure the structural complexity of a parity game, which allows solving parity games in polynomial time. This includes as special cases the asymptotic settings of those parameters covered by the results of Calude, Jain Khoussainov, Li, and Stephan (2017), of Jurdziński and Lazić (2017), and of Lehtinen (2018), and it significantly extends the range of such settings, for example to d = 2^O(√{lg n}) and k = O(√{lg n}).
Cite as

Laure Daviaud, Marcin Jurdziński, and K. S. Thejaswini. The Strahler Number of a Parity Game. In 47th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 168, pp. 123:1-123:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

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@InProceedings{daviaud_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2020.123,
  author =	{Daviaud, Laure and Jurdzi\'{n}ski, Marcin and Thejaswini, K. S.},
  title =	{{The Strahler Number of a Parity Game}},
  booktitle =	{47th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2020)},
  pages =	{123:1--123:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-138-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{168},
  editor =	{Czumaj, Artur and Dawar, Anuj and Merelli, Emanuela},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2020.123},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-125304},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2020.123},
  annote =	{Keywords: parity game, attractor decomposition, progress measure, universal tree, Strahler number}
}
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