Pumping-Like Results for Copyless Cost Register Automata and Polynomially Ambiguous Weighted Automata

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Mazowiecki, Filip, Puch, Antoni, Smertnig, Daniel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Mazowiecki, Filip
Puch, Antoni
Smertnig, Daniel
author_facet Mazowiecki, Filip
Puch, Antoni
Smertnig, Daniel
contents In this work we consider two rich subclasses of weighted automata over fields: polynomially ambiguous weighted automata and copyless cost register automata. Primarily we are interested in understanding their expressiveness power. Over the field of rationals and $1$-letter alphabets, it is known that the two classes coincide; they are equivalent to linear recurrence sequences (LRS) whose exponential bases are roots of rationals. We develop a tool we call Pumping Sequence Families, which, by exploiting the simple single-letter behaviour of the models, yields two pumping-like results over arbitrary fields with unrestricted alphabets, one for each class. As a corollary of these results, we present examples proving that the two classes become incomparable over the field of rationals with unrestricted alphabets. We complement the results by analysing the zeroness and equivalence problems. For weighted automata (even unrestricted) these problems are well understood: there are polynomial time, and even NC$^2$ algorithms. For copyless cost register automata we show that the two problems are \textsc{PSpace}-complete, where the difficulty is to show the lower bound.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_07356
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Pumping-Like Results for Copyless Cost Register Automata and Polynomially Ambiguous Weighted Automata
Mazowiecki, Filip
Puch, Antoni
Smertnig, Daniel
Formal Languages and Automata Theory
In this work we consider two rich subclasses of weighted automata over fields: polynomially ambiguous weighted automata and copyless cost register automata. Primarily we are interested in understanding their expressiveness power. Over the field of rationals and $1$-letter alphabets, it is known that the two classes coincide; they are equivalent to linear recurrence sequences (LRS) whose exponential bases are roots of rationals. We develop a tool we call Pumping Sequence Families, which, by exploiting the simple single-letter behaviour of the models, yields two pumping-like results over arbitrary fields with unrestricted alphabets, one for each class. As a corollary of these results, we present examples proving that the two classes become incomparable over the field of rationals with unrestricted alphabets. We complement the results by analysing the zeroness and equivalence problems. For weighted automata (even unrestricted) these problems are well understood: there are polynomial time, and even NC$^2$ algorithms. For copyless cost register automata we show that the two problems are \textsc{PSpace}-complete, where the difficulty is to show the lower bound.
title Pumping-Like Results for Copyless Cost Register Automata and Polynomially Ambiguous Weighted Automata
topic Formal Languages and Automata Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07356