Publication
Title
When are emptiness and containment decidable for probabilistic automata?
Author
Abstract
The emptiness and containment problems for probabilistic automata are natural quantitative generalisations of the classical language emptiness and inclusion problems for Boolean automata. It is known that both problems are undecidable. We provide a more refined view of these problems in terms of the degree of ambiguity of probabilistic automata. We show that a gap version of the emptiness problem (known to be undecidable in general) becomes decidable for automata of polynomial ambiguity. We complement this positive result by showing that emptiness remains undecidable when restricted to automata of linear ambiguity. We then turn to finitely ambiguous automata and give a conditional decidability proof for containment in case one of the automata is assumed to be unambiguous. Part of our proof relies on the decidability of the theory of real exponentiation, proved, subject to Schanuel's Conjecture, by Macintyre and Wilkie.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Journal of computer and system sciences. - New York, N.Y.
Publication
New York, N.Y. : 2021
ISSN
0022-0000
DOI
10.1016/J.JCSS.2021.01.006
Volume/pages
119 (2021) , p. 78-96
ISI
000634149800006
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 25.03.2021
Last edited 02.10.2024
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