12 Search Results for "Mazzocchi, Nicolas"

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CSL.2026.44
Minimal DFAs Witnessing Language Inequivalence

Authors: Jan Martens

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 363, 34th EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL 2026)

Abstract
We study small witnesses for the inequivalence of two regular languages. A natural witness is a distinguishing word, e.g. a word in exactly one of the two languages. We propose using more succinct witnesses in the form of witnessing DFAs. A witnessing DFA recognizes a subset of one of the languages and contains at least one distinguishing word. In this way the DFA expresses behaviour contained in the first language but not the second. We show witnessing DFAs can be used to present more concise witnesses for the inequivalence of two regular languages. We show that the decision problem for the existence of a witnessing DFA of certain size is NP-complete in general, and in P in the special case of unary DFAs. Besides these computational aspects, we study structural properties of witnessing DFAs. Not all languages can be a minimal witness. It turns out that minimal witnesses are exactly the languages that are not decomposable in the union of languages with smaller state-complexity, the so-called prime languages as studied earlier by Kupferman and Mosheiff.
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Jan Martens. Minimal DFAs Witnessing Language Inequivalence. In 34th EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 363, pp. 44:1-44:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{martens:LIPIcs.CSL.2026.44,
  author =	{Martens, Jan},
  title =	{{Minimal DFAs Witnessing Language Inequivalence}},
  booktitle =	{34th EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL 2026)},
  pages =	{44:1--44:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-411-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{363},
  editor =	{Guerrini, Stefano and K\"{o}nig, Barbara},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CSL.2026.44},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-254691},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CSL.2026.44},
  annote =	{Keywords: Deterministic Finite Automata, Language Inequivalence, DFA decomposition, Prime languages}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.38
The Complexity of Separability for Semilinear Sets and Parikh Automata

Authors: Elias Rojas Collins, Chris Köcher, and Georg Zetzsche

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

Abstract
In a separability problem, we are given two sets K and L from a class 𝒞, and we want to decide whether there exists a set S from a class 𝒮 such that K ⊆ S and S ∩ L = ∅. In this case, we speak of separability of sets in 𝒞 by sets in 𝒮. We study two types of separability problems. First, we consider separability of semilinear sets (i.e. subsets of ℕ^d for some d) by sets definable by quantifier-free monadic Presburger formulas (or equivalently, the recognizable subsets of ℕ^d). Here, a formula is monadic if each atom uses at most one variable. Second, we consider separability of languages of Parikh automata by regular languages. A Parikh automaton is a machine with access to counters that can only be incremented, and have to meet a semilinear constraint at the end of the run. Both of these separability problems are known to be decidable with elementary complexity. Our main results are that both problems are coNP-complete. In the case of semilinear sets, coNP-completeness holds regardless of whether the input sets are specified by existential Presburger formulas, quantifier-free formulas, or semilinear representations. Our results imply that recognizable separability of rational subsets of Σ* × ℕ^d (shown decidable by Choffrut and Grigorieff) is coNP-complete as well. Another application is that regularity of deterministic Parikh automata (where the target set is specified using a quantifier-free Presburger formula) is coNP-complete as well.
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Elias Rojas Collins, Chris Köcher, and Georg Zetzsche. The Complexity of Separability for Semilinear Sets and Parikh Automata. In 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 345, pp. 38:1-38:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{collins_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.38,
  author =	{Collins, Elias Rojas and K\"{o}cher, Chris and Zetzsche, Georg},
  title =	{{The Complexity of Separability for Semilinear Sets and Parikh Automata}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)},
  pages =	{38:1--38:21},
  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.2025.38},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-241457},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.38},
  annote =	{Keywords: Vector Addition System, Separability, Regular Language}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.21
Quantitative Language Automata

Authors: Thomas A. Henzinger, Pavol Kebis, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and N. Ege Saraç

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 348, 36th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2025)

Abstract
A quantitative word automaton (QWA) defines a function from infinite words to values. For example, every infinite run of a limit-average QWA 𝒜 obtains a mean payoff, and every word w ∈ Σ^ω is assigned the maximal mean payoff obtained by nondeterministic runs of 𝒜 over w. We introduce quantitative language automata (QLAs) that define functions from language generators (i.e., implementations) to values, where a language generator can be nonprobabilistic, defining a set of infinite words, or probabilistic, defining a probability measure over infinite words. A QLA consists of a QWA and an aggregator function. For example, given a QWA 𝒜, the infimum aggregator maps each language L ⊆ Σ^ω to the greatest lower bound assigned by 𝒜 to any word in L. For boolean value sets, QWAs define boolean properties of traces, and QLAs define boolean properties of sets of traces, i.e., hyperproperties. For more general value sets, QLAs serve as a specification language for a generalization of hyperproperties, called quantitative hyperproperties. A nonprobabilistic (resp. probabilistic) quantitative hyperproperty assigns a value to each set (resp. distribution) G of traces, e.g., the minimal (resp. expected) average response time exhibited by the traces in G. We give several examples of quantitative hyperproperties and investigate three paradigmatic problems for QLAs: evaluation, nonemptiness, and universality. In the evaluation problem, given a QLA 𝔸 and an implementation G, we ask for the value that 𝔸 assigns to G. In the nonemptiness (resp. universality) problem, given a QLA 𝔸 and a value k, we ask whether 𝔸 assigns at least k to some (resp. every) language. We provide a comprehensive picture of decidability for these problems for QLAs with common aggregators as well as their restrictions to ω-regular languages and trace distributions generated by finite-state Markov chains.
Cite as

Thomas A. Henzinger, Pavol Kebis, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and N. Ege Saraç. Quantitative Language Automata. In 36th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 348, pp. 21:1-21:24, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{henzinger_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.21,
  author =	{Henzinger, Thomas A. and Kebis, Pavol and Mazzocchi, Nicolas and Sara\c{c}, N. Ege},
  title =	{{Quantitative Language Automata}},
  booktitle =	{36th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2025)},
  pages =	{21:1--21:24},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-389-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{348},
  editor =	{Bouyer, Patricia and van de Pol, Jaco},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.21},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239718},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.21},
  annote =	{Keywords: Quantitative hyperproperties, quantitative automata, automata-based verification}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.7
Temporal Explorability Games

Authors: Pete Austin, Sougata Bose, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and Patrick Totzke

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 348, 36th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2025)

Abstract
Temporal graphs extend ordinary graphs with discrete time that affects the availability of edges. We consider solving games played on temporal graphs where one player aims to explore the graph, i.e., visit all vertices. The complexity depends majorly on two factors: the presence of an adversary and how edge availability is specified. We demonstrate that on static graphs, where edges are always available, solving explorability games is just as hard as solving reachability games. In contrast, on temporal graphs, the complexity of explorability coincides with generalized reachability (NP-complete for one-player and PSPACE-complete for two player games). We show that if temporal graphs are given symbolically, even one-player reachability (and thus explorability and generalized reachability) games are PSPACE-hard. For one player, all these are also solvable in PSPACE and for two players, they are in PSPACE, EXP and EXP, respectively.
Cite as

Pete Austin, Sougata Bose, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and Patrick Totzke. Temporal Explorability Games. In 36th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 348, pp. 7:1-7:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{austin_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.7,
  author =	{Austin, Pete and Bose, Sougata and Mazzocchi, Nicolas and Totzke, Patrick},
  title =	{{Temporal Explorability Games}},
  booktitle =	{36th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2025)},
  pages =	{7:1--7:17},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-389-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{348},
  editor =	{Bouyer, Patricia and van de Pol, Jaco},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.7},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239575},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2025.7},
  annote =	{Keywords: Temporal Graphs, Explorability, Reachability, Games}
}
Document
Track B: Automata, Logic, Semantics, and Theory of Programming
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.155
Approximate Problems for Finite Transducers

Authors: Emmanuel Filiot, Ismaël Jecker, Khushraj Madnani, and Saina Sunny

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 334, 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)

Abstract
Finite (word) state transducers extend finite state automata by defining a binary relation over finite words, called rational relation. If the rational relation is the graph of a function, this function is said to be rational. The class of sequential functions is a strict subclass of rational functions, defined as the functions recognised by input-deterministic finite state transducers. The class membership problems between those classes are known to be decidable. We consider approximate versions of these problems and show they are decidable as well. This includes the approximate functionality problem, which asks whether given a rational relation (by a transducer), is it close to a rational function, and the approximate determinisation problem, which asks whether a given rational function is close to a sequential function. We prove decidability results for several classical distances, including Hamming and Levenshtein edit distance. Finally, we investigate the approximate uniformisation problem, which asks, given a rational relation R, whether there exists a sequential function that is close to some function uniformising R. As its exact version, we prove that this problem is undecidable.
Cite as

Emmanuel Filiot, Ismaël Jecker, Khushraj Madnani, and Saina Sunny. Approximate Problems for Finite Transducers. In 52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 334, pp. 155:1-155:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{filiot_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.155,
  author =	{Filiot, Emmanuel and Jecker, Isma\"{e}l and Madnani, Khushraj and Sunny, Saina},
  title =	{{Approximate Problems for Finite Transducers}},
  booktitle =	{52nd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2025)},
  pages =	{155:1--155:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-372-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{334},
  editor =	{Censor-Hillel, Keren and Grandoni, Fabrizio and Ouaknine, Jo\"{e}l and Puppis, Gabriele},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.155},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-235329},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2025.155},
  annote =	{Keywords: Finite state transducers, Edit distance, Determinisation, Functionality}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2024.29
Strategic Dominance: A New Preorder for Nondeterministic Processes

Authors: Thomas A. Henzinger, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and N. Ege Saraç

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 311, 35th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2024)

Abstract
We study the following refinement relation between nondeterministic state-transition models: model ℬ strategically dominates model 𝒜 iff every deterministic refinement of 𝒜 is language contained in some deterministic refinement of ℬ. While language containment is trace inclusion, and the (fair) simulation preorder coincides with tree inclusion, strategic dominance falls strictly between the two and can be characterized as "strategy inclusion" between 𝒜 and ℬ: every strategy that resolves the nondeterminism of 𝒜 is dominated by a strategy that resolves the nondeterminism of ℬ. Strategic dominance can be checked in 2-ExpTime by a decidable first-order Presburger logic with quantification over words and strategies, called resolver logic. We give several other applications of resolver logic, including checking the co-safety, co-liveness, and history-determinism of boolean and quantitative automata, and checking the inclusion between hyperproperties that are specified by nondeterministic boolean and quantitative automata.
Cite as

Thomas A. Henzinger, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and N. Ege Saraç. Strategic Dominance: A New Preorder for Nondeterministic Processes. In 35th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 311, pp. 29:1-29:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{henzinger_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2024.29,
  author =	{Henzinger, Thomas A. and Mazzocchi, Nicolas and Sara\c{c}, N. Ege},
  title =	{{Strategic Dominance: A New Preorder for Nondeterministic Processes}},
  booktitle =	{35th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2024)},
  pages =	{29:1--29:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-339-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{311},
  editor =	{Majumdar, Rupak and Silva, Alexandra},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2024.29},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-208011},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2024.29},
  annote =	{Keywords: quantitative automata, refinement relation, resolver, strategy, history-determinism}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2023.17
Safety and Liveness of Quantitative Automata

Authors: Udi Boker, Thomas A. Henzinger, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and N. Ege Saraç

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 279, 34th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2023)

Abstract
The safety-liveness dichotomy is a fundamental concept in formal languages which plays a key role in verification. Recently, this dichotomy has been lifted to quantitative properties, which are arbitrary functions from infinite words to partially-ordered domains. We look into harnessing the dichotomy for the specific classes of quantitative properties expressed by quantitative automata. These automata contain finitely many states and rational-valued transition weights, and their common value functions Inf, Sup, LimInf, LimSup, LimInfAvg, LimSupAvg, and DSum map infinite words into the totally-ordered domain of real numbers. In this automata-theoretic setting, we establish a connection between quantitative safety and topological continuity and provide an alternative characterization of quantitative safety and liveness in terms of their boolean counterparts. For all common value functions, we show how the safety closure of a quantitative automaton can be constructed in PTime, and we provide PSpace-complete checks of whether a given quantitative automaton is safe or live, with the exception of LimInfAvg and LimSupAvg automata, for which the safety check is in ExpSpace. Moreover, for deterministic Sup, LimInf, and LimSup automata, we give PTime decompositions into safe and live automata. These decompositions enable the separation of techniques for safety and liveness verification for quantitative specifications.
Cite as

Udi Boker, Thomas A. Henzinger, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and N. Ege Saraç. Safety and Liveness of Quantitative Automata. In 34th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 279, pp. 17:1-17:18, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{boker_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2023.17,
  author =	{Boker, Udi and Henzinger, Thomas A. and Mazzocchi, Nicolas and Sara\c{c}, N. Ege},
  title =	{{Safety and Liveness of Quantitative Automata}},
  booktitle =	{34th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2023)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:18},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-299-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{279},
  editor =	{P\'{e}rez, Guillermo A. and Raskin, Jean-Fran\c{c}ois},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2023.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-190118},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2023.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: quantitative safety, quantitative liveness, quantitative automata}
}
Document
Track B: Automata, Logic, Semantics, and Theory of Programming
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2023.129
Regular Methods for Operator Precedence Languages

Authors: Thomas A. Henzinger, Pavol Kebis, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and N. Ege Saraç

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 261, 50th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2023)

Abstract
The operator precedence languages (OPLs) represent the largest known subclass of the context-free languages which enjoys all desirable closure and decidability properties. This includes the decidability of language inclusion, which is the ultimate verification problem. Operator precedence grammars, automata, and logics have been investigated and used, for example, to verify programs with arithmetic expressions and exceptions (both of which are deterministic pushdown but lie outside the scope of the visibly pushdown languages). In this paper, we complete the picture and give, for the first time, an algebraic characterization of the class of OPLs in the form of a syntactic congruence that has finitely many equivalence classes exactly for the operator precedence languages. This is a generalization of the celebrated Myhill-Nerode theorem for the regular languages to OPLs. As one of the consequences, we show that universality and language inclusion for nondeterministic operator precedence automata can be solved by an antichain algorithm. Antichain algorithms avoid determinization and complementation through an explicit subset construction, by leveraging a quasi-order on words, which allows the pruning of the search space for counterexample words without sacrificing completeness. Antichain algorithms can be implemented symbolically, and these implementations are today the best-performing algorithms in practice for the inclusion of finite automata. We give a generic construction of the quasi-order needed for antichain algorithms from a finite syntactic congruence. This yields the first antichain algorithm for OPLs, an algorithm that solves the ExpTime-hard language inclusion problem for OPLs in exponential time.
Cite as

Thomas A. Henzinger, Pavol Kebis, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and N. Ege Saraç. Regular Methods for Operator Precedence Languages. In 50th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 261, pp. 129:1-129:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{henzinger_et_al:LIPIcs.ICALP.2023.129,
  author =	{Henzinger, Thomas A. and Kebis, Pavol and Mazzocchi, Nicolas and Sara\c{c}, N. Ege},
  title =	{{Regular Methods for Operator Precedence Languages}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP 2023)},
  pages =	{129:1--129:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-278-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{261},
  editor =	{Etessami, Kousha and Feige, Uriel and Puppis, Gabriele},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2023.129},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-181814},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2023.129},
  annote =	{Keywords: operator precedence automata, syntactic congruence, antichain algorithm}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2021.18
Decomposing Permutation Automata

Authors: Ismaël Jecker, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and Petra Wolf

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

Abstract
A deterministic finite automaton (DFA) 𝒜 is composite if its language L(𝒜) can be decomposed into an intersection ⋂_{i = 1}^k L(𝒜_i) of languages of smaller DFAs. Otherwise, 𝒜 is prime. This notion of primality was introduced by Kupferman and Mosheiff in 2013, and while they proved that we can decide whether a DFA is composite, the precise complexity of this problem is still open, with a doubly-exponential gap between the upper and lower bounds. In this work, we focus on permutation DFAs, i.e., those for which the transition monoid is a group. We provide an NP algorithm to decide whether a permutation DFA is composite, and show that the difficulty of this problem comes from the number of non-accepting states of the instance: we give a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm with the number of rejecting states as the parameter. Moreover, we investigate the class of commutative permutation DFAs. Their structural properties allow us to decide compositionality in NL, and even in LOGSPACE if the alphabet size is fixed. Despite this low complexity, we show that complex behaviors still arise in this class: we provide a family of composite DFAs each requiring polynomially many factors with respect to its size. We also consider the variant of the problem that asks whether a DFA is k-factor composite, that is, decomposable into k smaller DFAs, for some given integer k ∈ ℕ. We show that, for commutative permutation DFAs, restricting the number of factors makes the decision computationally harder, and yields a problem with tight bounds: it is NP-complete. Finally, we show that in general, this problem is in PSPACE, and it is in LOGSPACE for DFAs with a singleton alphabet.
Cite as

Ismaël Jecker, Nicolas Mazzocchi, and Petra Wolf. Decomposing Permutation Automata. In 32nd International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2021). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 203, pp. 18:1-18:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2021)

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@InProceedings{jecker_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2021.18,
  author =	{Jecker, Isma\"{e}l and Mazzocchi, Nicolas and Wolf, Petra},
  title =	{{Decomposing Permutation Automata}},
  booktitle =	{32nd International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2021)},
  pages =	{18:1--18:19},
  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.2021.18},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-143956},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2021.18},
  annote =	{Keywords: Deterministic finite automata (DFA), Permutation automata, Commutative languages, Decomposition, Regular Languages, Primality}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2020.17
Weighted Transducers for Robustness Verification

Authors: Emmanuel Filiot, Nicolas Mazzocchi, Jean-François Raskin, Sriram Sankaranarayanan, and Ashutosh Trivedi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 171, 31st International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2020)

Abstract
Automata theory provides us with fundamental notions such as languages, membership, emptiness and inclusion that in turn allow us to specify and verify properties of reactive systems in a useful manner. However, these notions all yield "yes"/"no" answers that sometimes fall short of being satisfactory answers when the models being analyzed are imperfect, and the observations made are prone to errors. To address this issue, a common engineering approach is not just to verify that a system satisfies a property, but whether it does so robustly. We present notions of robustness that place a metric on words, thus providing a natural notion of distance between words. Such a metric naturally leads to a topological neighborhood of words and languages, leading to quantitative and robust versions of the membership, emptiness and inclusion problems. More generally, we consider weighted transducers to model the cost of errors. Such a transducer models neighborhoods of words by providing the cost of rewriting a word into another. The main contribution of this work is to study robustness verification problems in the context of weighted transducers. We provide algorithms for solving the robust and quantitative versions of the membership and inclusion problems while providing useful motivating case studies including approximate pattern matching problems to detect clinically relevant events in a large type-1 diabetes dataset.
Cite as

Emmanuel Filiot, Nicolas Mazzocchi, Jean-François Raskin, Sriram Sankaranarayanan, and Ashutosh Trivedi. Weighted Transducers for Robustness Verification. In 31st International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 171, pp. 17:1-17:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

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@InProceedings{filiot_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2020.17,
  author =	{Filiot, Emmanuel and Mazzocchi, Nicolas and Raskin, Jean-Fran\c{c}ois and Sankaranarayanan, Sriram and Trivedi, Ashutosh},
  title =	{{Weighted Transducers for Robustness Verification}},
  booktitle =	{31st International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2020)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-160-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{171},
  editor =	{Konnov, Igor and Kov\'{a}cs, Laura},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2020.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-128290},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2020.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: Weighted transducers, Quantitative verification, Fault-tolerance}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2020.51
Unary Prime Languages

Authors: Ismaël Jecker, Orna Kupferman, and Nicolas Mazzocchi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 170, 45th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2020)

Abstract
A regular language L of finite words is composite if there are regular languages L₁,L₂,…,L_t such that L = ⋂_{i = 1}^t L_i and the index (number of states in a minimal DFA) of every language L_i is strictly smaller than the index of L. Otherwise, L is prime. Primality of regular languages was introduced and studied in [O. Kupferman and J. Mosheiff, 2015], where the complexity of deciding the primality of the language of a given DFA was left open, with a doubly-exponential gap between the upper and lower bounds. We study primality for unary regular languages, namely regular languages with a singleton alphabet. A unary language corresponds to a subset of ℕ, making the study of unary prime languages closer to that of primality in number theory. We show that the setting of languages is richer. In particular, while every composite number is the product of two smaller numbers, the number t of languages necessary to decompose a composite unary language induces a strict hierarchy. In addition, a primality witness for a unary language L, namely a word that is not in L but is in all products of languages that contain L and have an index smaller than L’s, may be of exponential length. Still, we are able to characterize compositionality by structural properties of a DFA for L, leading to a LogSpace algorithm for primality checking of unary DFAs.
Cite as

Ismaël Jecker, Orna Kupferman, and Nicolas Mazzocchi. Unary Prime Languages. In 45th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 170, pp. 51:1-51:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020)

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@InProceedings{jecker_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2020.51,
  author =	{Jecker, Isma\"{e}l and Kupferman, Orna and Mazzocchi, Nicolas},
  title =	{{Unary Prime Languages}},
  booktitle =	{45th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2020)},
  pages =	{51:1--51:12},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-159-7},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2020},
  volume =	{170},
  editor =	{Esparza, Javier and Kr\'{a}l', Daniel},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2020.51},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-127177},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2020.51},
  annote =	{Keywords: Deterministic Finite Automata (DFA), Regular Languages, Primality}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2019.40
Two-Way Parikh Automata

Authors: Emmanuel Filiot, Shibashis Guha, and Nicolas Mazzocchi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 150, 39th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2019)

Abstract
Parikh automata extend automata with counters whose values can only be tested at the end of the computation, with respect to membership into a semi-linear set. Parikh automata have found several applications, for instance in transducer theory, as they enjoy a decidable emptiness problem. In this paper, we study two-way Parikh automata. We show that emptiness becomes undecidable in the non-deterministic case. However, it is PSpace-C when the number of visits to any input position is bounded and the semi-linear set is given as an existential Presburger formula. We also give tight complexity bounds for the inclusion, equivalence and universality problems. Finally, we characterise precisely the complexity of those problems when the semi-linear constraint is given by an arbitrary Presburger formula.
Cite as

Emmanuel Filiot, Shibashis Guha, and Nicolas Mazzocchi. Two-Way Parikh Automata. In 39th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2019). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 150, pp. 40:1-40:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)

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@InProceedings{filiot_et_al:LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2019.40,
  author =	{Filiot, Emmanuel and Guha, Shibashis and Mazzocchi, Nicolas},
  title =	{{Two-Way Parikh Automata}},
  booktitle =	{39th IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2019)},
  pages =	{40:1--40:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-131-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2019},
  volume =	{150},
  editor =	{Chattopadhyay, Arkadev and Gastin, Paul},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2019.40},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-116027},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2019.40},
  annote =	{Keywords: Parikh automata, two-way automata, Presburger arithmetic}
}
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