Existential and Universal Width of Alternating Finite Automata

Yo Sub Han, Sungmin Kim, Sang Ki Ko, Kai Salomaa

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

The existential width of an alternating finite automaton (AFA) A on a string w is, roughly speaking, the number of nondeterministic choices that A uses in an accepting computation on w that uses least nondeterminism. The universal width of A on string w is the least number of parallel branches an accepting computation of A on w uses. The existential or universal width of A is said to be finite if it is bounded for all accepted strings. We show that finiteness of existential and universal width of an AFA is decidable. Also we give hardness results and give an algorithm to decide whether the existential or universal width of an AFA is bounded by a given integer.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDescriptional Complexity of Formal Systems - 25th IFIP WG 1.02 International Conference, DCFS 2023, Proceedings
EditorsHenning Bordihn, Nicholas Tran, György Vaszil
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Pages51-64
Number of pages14
ISBN (Print)9783031343254
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Event25th International Conference on Descriptional Complexity of Format Systems, DCFS 2023 - Potsdam, Germany
Duration: 4 Jul 20236 Jul 2023

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume13918 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference25th International Conference on Descriptional Complexity of Format Systems, DCFS 2023
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityPotsdam
Period4/07/236/07/23

Keywords

  • alternating finite automaton
  • decidability
  • measure of nondeterminism
  • space complexity
  • universal and existential choices

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