A computational model for tiling recognizable two-dimensional languages

Tiling systems are a well accepted model to define recognizable two-dimensional languages but they are not an effective device for recognition unless a scanning strategy for the pictures is fixed. We define a tiling automaton as a tiling system equipped with a scanning strategy and a suitable data structure. The class of languages accepted by tiling automata coincides with the REC family. In this framework it is possible to define determinism, non-determinism and unambiguity. Then (deterministic) tiling automata are compared with the other known (deterministic) automata models for two-dimensional languages.     

Interference automata

We propose a computing model, the Two-Way Optical Interference Automata (2OIA), that makes use of the phenomenon of optical interference. We introduce this model to investigate the increase in power, in terms of language recognition, of a classical Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA) when endowed with the facility of interference. The question is in the spirit of Two-Way Finite Automata With Quantum and Classical States (2QCFA) [A. Ambainis, J. Watrous, Two-way finite automata with quantum and classical states, Theoret. Comput. Sci. 287 (1) (2002) 299–311] wherein the classical DFA is augmented with a quantum component of constant size. We test the power of 2OIA against the languages mentioned in the above paper. We give efficient 2OIA algorithms to recognize languages for which 2QCFA machines have been shown to exist, as well as languages whose status vis-a-vis 2QCFA has been posed as open questions. Having a DFA as a component, it trivially recognizes regular languages. We show that our model can recognize all languages recognized by 1-way deterministic blind counter automata. Finally we show the existence of a language that cannot be recognized by a 2OIA but which can be recognized by an O(n³)$O\left(n^3\right)$ space Turing machine.     

Unbounded-error quantum computation with small space bounds

We prove the following facts about the language recognition power of quantum Turing machines (QTMs) in the unbounded error setting: QTMs are strictly more powerful than probabilistic Turing machines for any common space bound s satisfying s(n)=o(loglogn). For “one-way” Turing machines, where the input tape head is not allowed to move left, the above result holds for s(n)=o(logn). We also give a characterization for the class of languages recognized with unbounded error by real-time quantum finite automata (QFAs) with restricted measurements. It turns out that these automata are equal in power to their probabilistic counterparts, and this fact does not change when the QFA model is augmented to allow general measurements and mixed states. Unlike the case with classical finite automata, when the QFA tape head is allowed to remain stationary in some steps, more languages become recognizable. We define and use a QTM model that generalizes the other variants introduced earlier in the study of quantum space complexity.     

The complexity of ranking simple languages

Ranking is the problem of computing for an input string its lexicographic index in a given (fixed) language. This paper concerns the complexity of ranking. We show that ranking languages accepted by 1-way unambiguous auxiliary pushdown automata operating in polynomial time is inNC ⁽²⁾. We also prove negative results about ranking for several classes of simple languages.C is rankable in deterministic polynomial time iffP=P ^#P , whereC is any of the following six classes of languages: (1) languages accepted by logtime-bounded nondeterministic Turing machines, (2) languages accepted by (uniform) families of unbounded fan-in circuits of constant depth and polynomial size, (3) languages accepted by 2-way deterministic pushdown automata, (4) languages accepted by multihead deterministic finite automata, (5) languages accepted by 1-way nondeterministic logspace-bounded Turing machines, and (6) finitely ambiguous linear context-free languages.This research was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant DCR-8696097. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 3rd Annual Structure in Complexity Theory Conference, Washington, DC, June 1988.     

Automata for Epistemic Temporal Logic with Synchronous Communication

We suggest that developing automata theoretic foundations is relevant for knowledge theory, so that we study not only what is known by agents, but also the mechanisms by which such knowledge is arrived at. We define a class of epistemic automata, in which agents’ local states are annotated with abstract knowledge assertions about others. These are finite state agents who communicate synchronously with each other and information exchange is ‘perfect’. We show that the class of recognizable languages has good closure properties, leading to a Kleene-type theorem using what we call regular knowledge expressions. These automata model distributed causal knowledge in the following way: each agent in the system has a partial knowledge of the temporal evolution of the system, and every time agents synchronize, they update each other’s knowledge, resulting in a more up-to-date view of the system state. Hence we show that these automata can be used to solve the satisfiability problem for a natural epistemic temporal logic for local properties. Finally, we characterize the class of languages recognized by epistemic automata as the regular consistent languages studied in concurrency theory.     

Variants of top-down tree transducers with look-ahead

In this article we consider deterministic and strongly deterministic top-down tree transducers with regular look-ahead, with regular check, with deterministic top-down look-ahead, and with deterministic top-down check. We compare the transformational power of these tree transducer classes by giving a correct inclusion diagram of the tree transformation classes induced by them. Along with the comparison we decompose some of the examined classes into simpler classes and we introduce the concept of the deterministic top-down tree automata with deterministic top-down look-ahead. We show that these recognizers recognize a tree language class which is strictly between the class of regular tree languages and the class of tree languages recognizable by deterministic top-down tree automata. We also study the closure properties of the examined tree transformation classes. We show that some classes are closed under composition while others, for example the class of tree transformations induced by deterministic top-down tree transducers with deterministic top-down look-ahead, are not.     

量子自动机的刻画

澄清了各类量子自动机之间的相互关系,并给出了量子自动机的各种等价刻画定理.引入G-量子自动机、g-量子自动机、(广义)量子自动机及G-量子文法和g-量子文法,并阐明了它们与其他量子自动机之间的等价关系.在一定条件下讨论了G(g)-量子自动机与G(g)-量子文法的等价性,从而解决了关于量子文法产生量子正规语言的问题.讨论了量子语言与正规语言的关系,特别是回答了Gudder提出的两个公开问题.最后,给出了一种减少状态空间维数的方法.     

Probabilistic asynchronous automata

Asynchronous automata were introduced by W. Zielonka as an algebraic model of distributed systems, showing that the class of trace languages recognizable by automata over free partially commutative monoids coincides with the class of trace languages recognizable by deterministic asynchronous automata. In this paper we extend the notion of asynchronous automata to the probabilistic case. Our main result is a nontrivial generalization to Zielonka's theorem: we prove that the sets of behaviors of probabilistic automata and of probabilistic asynchronous automata coincide in the case of concurrent alphabets with acyclic dependency graphs. This research has been supported by European Projects EBRA Nos. 3148 (DEMON), 3166 (ASMICS), and 6317 (ASMICS2), by MURST 40%, and by the CNR Project “Modelli di Computazione Parallela.”     

处理图像语言的格点自动机与格点文法

Giammarresi与Restivo在一篇综述中总结出一个关于可识别的图像语言(即2维矩形语言)REC的等价性定理.对比1维字语言的相应结果,其中还缺少关于生成文法的相应一环.提出了一种(矩形的)格点文法,正好弥补了这一缺环.而取代2维on-line tesselation自动机,引入了格点自动机的概念.一方面,它与经典的2元树型自动机更相似,另一方面,它也是格点文法与等价性定理中关于REC的其他描述方式之间的一座桥梁.同时,标准的existential monadic二阶逻辑也被一种更弱的规范框架——positive monadic分划逻辑所取代.由此导出一个新的更完整的关于REC的等价性定理.     

A note on partially ordered tree automata

A recent paper by Bouajjani, Muscholl and Touili shows that the class of languages accepted by partially ordered word automata (or equivalently accepted by Σ₂-formulae) is closed under semi-commutation and it suggested the following open question: can we extend this result to tree languages? This problem can be addressed by proving (1) that the class of tree regular languages accepted by Σ₂ formulae is strictly included in the class of languages accepted by partially ordered automata, and (2) that Bouajjani and the others results cannot be extended to tree.     

Restarting automata with auxiliary symbols restricted by lookahead size

This paper presents a study on lookahead hierarchies for restarting automata with auxiliary symbols. We show that the class of languages for deterministic monotone or monotone restarting automaton, whose restart step and rewrite step are separated, coincides with that of the same type of restarting automaton whose restart and rewrite steps are not separated, for any fixed lookahead size. For the non-monotone deterministic case, the lookahead length must be approximately doubled. We then turn our attention to restarting automata with small lookahead. For the general restarting automaton model, we show that there are just two different classes of languages recognized, through the restriction of lookahead size: those with lookahead size 1 and those with lookahead size 2. We also show that the respective (left-) monotone restarting automaton models characterize the context-free languages and that the respective right–left-monotone restarting automata characterize the linear languages both with just lookahead length 2.     

An algebraic approach to data languages and timed languages

Algebra offers an elegant and powerful approach to understand regular languages and finite automata. Such framework has been notoriously lacking for timed languages and timed automata. We introduce the notion of monoid recognizability for data languages, which includes timed languages as special case, in a way that respects the spirit of the classical situation. We study closure properties and hierarchies in this model and prove that emptiness is decidable under natural hypotheses. Our class of recognizable languages properly includes many families of deterministic timed languages that have been proposed until now, and the same holds for non-deterministic versions.     

More on quantum,stochastic, and pseudo stochastic languages with few states

Stochastic languages are the languages recognized by probabilistic finite automata (PFAs) with cutpoint over the field of real numbers. More general computational models over the same field such as generalized finite automata (GFAs) and quantum finite automata (QFAs) define the same class. In 1963, Rabin proved the set of stochastic languages to be uncountable presenting a single 2-state PFA over the binary alphabet recognizing uncountably many languages depending on the cutpoint. In this paper, we show the same result for unary stochastic languages. Namely, we exhibit a 2-state unary GFA, a 2-state unary QFA, and a family of 3-state unary PFAs recognizing uncountably many languages; all these numbers of states are optimal. After this, we completely characterize the class of languages recognized by 1-state GFAs, which is the only nontrivial class of languages recognized by 1-state automata. Finally, we consider the variations of PFAs, QFAs, and GFAs based on the notion of inclusive/exclusive cutpoint, and present some results on their expressive power.     

On the complexity of finite,pushdown, and stack automata

The complexity of predicates on several classes of formal languages is studied. For finite automata, pushdown automata, and several classes of stack automata, every nontrivial predicate on the languages accepted by the 1-way devices requires as much time and space as the recognition problem for any language accepted by the corresponding 2-way devices. Moreover there are nontrivial predicates on the languages accepted by the 1-way devices such that is the accepted language of some corresponding one or two head 2-way device. Thus our lower bounds are fairly tight.This research was sponsored in part by an NSF graduate fellowship in computer science at Cornell University, NSF grant GJ-35570 at Princeton University, and by United States Army Contract No. DA-31-124-ARO-D-462 at the University of Wisconsin.     

Trace monoids with idempotent generators and measure-only quantum automata

In this paper, we analyze a model of 1-way quantum automaton where only measurements are allowed ( MON -1qfa). The automaton works on a compatibility alphabet (S, E)(\Sigma, E) of observables and its probabilistic behavior is a formal series on the free partially commutative monoid FI(S, E)\hbox{FI}(\Sigma, E) with idempotent generators. We prove some properties of this class of formal series and we apply the results to analyze the class LMO(S, E){\bf LMO}(\Sigma, E) of languages recognized by MON -1qfa’s with isolated cut point. In particular, we prove that LMO(S, E){\bf LMO}(\Sigma, E) is a boolean algebra of recognizable languages with finite variation, and that LMO(S, E){\bf LMO}(\Sigma, E) is properly contained in the recognizable languages, with the exception of the trivial case of complete commutativity.     

On the Computational Complexity of P Automata

We characterize the classes of languages over finite alphabets which may be described by P automata, i.e., accepting P systems with communication rules only. Motivated by properties of natural computing systems, and the actual behavior of P automata, we study computational complexity classes with a certain restriction on the use of the available workspace in the course of computations and relate these to the language classes described by P automata. We prove that if the rules of the P system are applied sequentially, then the accepted language class is strictly included in the class of languages accepted by one-way Turing machines with a logarithmically bounded workspace, and if the rules are applied in the maximally parallel manner, then the class of context-sensitive languages is obtained.     

Quantum automata for some multiperiodic languages

We exhibit small size measure-once one-way quantum finite automata (mo-1qfa’s) inducing multiperiodic stochastic events. Moreover, for certain classes of multiperiodic languages, we exhibit: (i) isolated cut point mo-1qfa’s whose size logarithmically depends on the periods; (ii) Monte Carlo mo-1qfa’s whose size logarithmically depends on the periods and polynomially on the inverse of the error probability.     

基于量子逻辑的自动机和文法理论

初步建立了基于量子逻辑的自动机和文法理论的基本框架.引入了量子文法(称为l值文法),特别是证明了任意l值正规文法生成的语言(称为量子语言)等价于某种基于量子逻辑且含动作(的自动机(称为l值自动机)识别的语言,反之,任意l值自动机识别的语言等价于某l值正规文法生成的语言.建立了l值泵引理,并得到量子语言的判定性刻画.最后简要讨论了正规文法与量子文法(即l值正规文法)的关系.因此,为进一步研究更复杂的量子自动机(如量子下推自动机和Turing机)和量子文法(如量子上下文无关文法和上下文有关文法)奠定了基础.     

A Burnside Approach to the Finite Substitution Problem

We introduce a new model of weighted automata: the desert automata. We show that their limitedness problem is PSPACE-complete by solving the underlying Burnside problem. As an application of this result, we give a positive solution to the so-called finite substitution problem which was open for more than 10 years: given recognizable languages K and L, decide whether there exists a finite substitution σ such that σ(K) = L.