We study the question of which visibly pushdown languages (VPLs) are in the complexity class $\mathsf{AC}^0$ and how to effectively decide this question. Our contribution is to introduce a particular subclass of one-turn VPLs, called intermediate VPLs, for which the raised question is entirely unclear: to the best of our knowledge our research community is unaware of containment or non-containment in $\mathsf{AC}^0$ for any language in our newly introduced class. Our main result states that there is an algorithm that, given a visibly pushdown automaton, correctly outputs exactly one of the following: that its language $L$ is in $\mathsf{AC}^0$, some $m\geq 2$ such that $L$ is $\mathsf{ACC}^0(m)$-hard (implying that $L$ is not in $\mathsf{AC}^0$), or a finite disjoint union of intermediate VPLs that $L$ is constant-depth equivalent to. In the latter of the three cases one can moreover effectively compute $k,l\in\mathbb{N}_{>0}$ with $k\not=l$ such that the concrete intermediate VPL $L(S\rightarrow \varepsilon\mid a c^{k-1} S b_1\mid ac^{l-1}Sb_2)$ is constant-depth reducible to the language $L$. Due to their particular nature we conjecture that either all intermediate VPLs are in $\mathsf{AC}^0$ or all are not. As a corollary of our main result we obtain that in case the input language is a visibly counter language our algorithm can effectively determine if it is in $\mathsf{AC}^0$ - hence our main result generalizes a result by Krebs et al. stating that it is decidable if a given visibly counter language is in $\mathsf{AC}^0$ (when restricted to well-matched words). For our proofs we revisit so-called Ext-algebras (introduced by Czarnetzki et al.), which are closely related to forest algebras (introduced by Bojańczyk and Walukiewicz), and use Green's relations.

We build a notion of algebraic recognition for visibly pushdown languages by finite algebraic objects. These come with a typical Eilenberg relationship, now between classes of visibly pushdown languages and classes of finite algebras. Building on that algebraic foundation, we further construct a topological object with one purpose being the possibility to derive a notion of equations, through which it is possible to prove that some given visibly pushdown language is not part of a certain class (or to even show decidability of the membership-problem of the class in some cases). In particular, we obtain a special instance of Reiterman's theorem for pseudo-varieties. These findings are then employed on two subclasses of the visibly pushdown languages, for which we derive concrete sets of equations. For some showcase languages, these equations are utilised to prove non-membership to the previously described classes.

Abstract Parametric timed automata (PTA) have been introduced by Alur, Henzinger, and Vardi as an extension of timed automata in which clocks can be compared against parameters. The reachability problem asks for the existence of an assignment of the parameters to the non-negative integers such that reachability holds in the underlying timed automaton. The reachability problem for PTA is long known to be undecidable, already over three parametric clocks. A few years ago, Bundala and Ouaknine proved that for PTA over two parametric clocks and one parameter the reachability problem is decidable and also showed a lower bound for the complexity class PSPACENEXP. Our main result is that the reachability problem for two-parametric timed automata with one parameter is EXPSPACE-complete. Our contribution is two-fold. For the EXPSPACE lower bound, inspired by [13, 14], we make use of deep results from complexity theory, namely a serializability characterization of EXPSPACE (in turn based on Barrington’s Theorem) and a logspace translation of numbers in Chinese remainder representation to binary representation due to Chiu, Davida, and Litow. It is shown that with small PTA over two parametric clocks and one parameter one can simulate serializability computations. For the EXPSPACE upper bound, we first give a careful exponential time reduction from PTA over two parametric clocks and one parameter to a (slight subclass of) parametric one-counter automata over one parameter based on a minor adjustment of a construction due to Bundala and Ouaknine. For solving the reachability problem for parametric one-counter automata with one parameter, we provide a series of techniques to partition a fictitious run into several carefully chosen subruns that allow us to prove that it is sufficient to consider a parameter value of exponential magnitude only. This allows us to show a doubly-exponential upper bound on the value of the only parameter of a PTA over two parametric clocks and one parameter. We hope that extensions of our techniques lead to finally establishing decidability of the long-standing open problem of reachability in parametric timed automata with two parametric clocks (and arbitrarily many parameters) and, if decidability holds, determinining its precise computational complexity.

We consider the problem of deciding whether a given pushdown system all of whose ε-transitions are deterministic is weakly bisimulation finite, that is, whether it is weakly bisimulation equivalent to a finite system. We prove that this problem is 2-EXPTIME-complete. This consists of three elements: First, we prove that the smallest finite system that is weakly bisimulation equivalent to a fixed pushdown system, if exists, has size at most doubly exponential in the description size of the pushdown system. Second, we propose a fast algorithm deciding whether a given pushdown system is weakly bisimulation equivalent to a finite system of a given size. Third, we prove 2-EXPTIME-hardness of the problem. The problem was known to be decidable, but the previous algorithm had Ackermannian complexity (6-EXPSPACE in the easier case of pushdown systems without ε-transitions); concerning lower bounds, only EXPTIME-hardness was known.

Parametric timed automata (PTA) have been introduced by Alur, Henzinger, and Vardi as an extension of timed automata in which clocks can be compared against parameters. The reachability problem asks for the existence of an assignment of the parameters to the non-negative integers such that reachability holds in the underlying timed automaton. The reachability problem for PTA is long known to be undecidable, already over three parametric clocks. A few years ago, Bundala and Ouaknine proved that for PTA over two parametric clocks and one parameter the reachability problem is decidable and also showed a lower bound for the complexity class PSPACE^NEXP. Our main result is that the reachability problem for parametric timed automata over two parametric clocks and one parameter is EXPSPACE-complete. For the EXPSPACE lower bound we make use of deep results from complexity theory, namely a serializability characterization of EXPSPACE (in turn based on Barrington’s Theorem) and a logspace translation of numbers in Chinese Remainder Representation to binary representation due to Chiu, Davida, and Litow. It is shown that with small PTA over two parametric clocks and one parameter one can simulate serializability computations. For the EXPSPACE upper bound, we first give a careful exponential time reduction from PTA over two parametric clocks and one parameter to a (slight subclass of) parametric one-counter automata over one parameter based on a minor adjustment of a construction due to Bundala and Ouaknine. For solving the reachability problem for parametric one-counter automata with one parameter, we provide a series of techniques to partition a fictitious run into several carefully chosen subruns that allow us to prove that it is sufficient to consider a parameter value of exponential magnitude only. This allows us to show a doubly-exponential upper bound on the value of the only parameter of a PTA over two parametric clocks and one parameter. We hope that extensions of our techniques lead to finally establishing decidability of the long-standing open problem of reachability in parametric timed automata with two parametric clocks (and arbitrarily many parameters) and, if decidability holds, determining its precise computational complexity.

We prove that the reachability problem for two-dimensional vector addition systems with states is NL-complete or PSPACE-complete, depending on whether the numbers in the input are encoded in unary or binary. As a key underlying technical result, we show that, if a configuration is reachable, then there exists a witnessing path whose sequence of transitions is contained in a bounded language defined by a regular expression of pseudo-polynomially bounded length. This, in turn, enables us to prove that the lengths of minimal reachability witnesses are pseudo-polynomially bounded.

Publikacja bezkosztowa

Equivalence of deterministic pushdown automata is a famous problem in theoretical computer science whose decidability has been shown by Sénizergues. Our first result shows that decidability no longer holds when moving from finite words to infinite words. This solves an open problem that has recently been raised by Löding. In fact, we show that already the equivalence problem for deterministic Büchi one-counter automata is undecidable. Hence, the decidability border is rather tight when taking into account a recent result by Löding and Repke that equivalence of deterministic weak parity pushdown automata (a subclass of deterministic Büchi pushdown automata) is decidable. Another known result on finite words is that the universality problem for vector addition systems is decidable. We show undecidability when moving to infinite words. In fact, we prove that already the universality problem for nondeterministic Büchi one-counter nets (or equivalently vector addition systems with one unbounded dimension) is undecidable.

A pattern is encountered in a word if some infix of the word is the image of the pattern under some non-erasing morphism. A pattern p is unavoidable if, over every finite alphabet, every sufficiently long word encounters p. A theorem by Zimin and independently by Bean, Ehrenfeucht and McNulty states that a pattern over n distinct variables is unavoidable if, and only if, p itself is encountered in the n-th Zimin pattern. Given an alphabet size k, we study the minimal length f(n,k) such that every word of length f(n,k) encounters the n-th Zimin pattern. It is known that f is upper-bounded by a tower of exponentials. Our main result states that f(n,k) is lower-bounded by a tower of n-3 exponentials, even for k=2. To the best of our knowledge, this improves upon a previously best-known doubly-exponential lower bound. As a further result, we prove a doubly-exponential upper bound for encountering Zimin patterns in the abelian sense.

In this paper the computational complexity of the (bi)simulation problem over restricted graph classes is studied. For trees given as pointer structures or terms the (bi)simulation problem is complete for logarithmic space or NC^1, respectively. This solves an open problem from Balcázar, Gabarró, and Sántha. We also show that the simulation problem is P-complete even for graphs of bounded path-width.

Branching VASS (BVASS) generalise vector addition systems with states by allowing for special branching transitions that can non-deterministically distribute a counter value between two control states. A run of a BVASS consequently becomes a tree, and reachability is to decide whether a given configuration is the root of a reachability tree. This paper shows P-completeness of reachability in BVASS in dimension one, the first decidability result for reachability in a subclass of BVASS known so far. Moreover, we show that coverability and boundedness in BVASS in dimension one are P-complete as well.

We introduce games with (bound) guess actions. These are games in which the players may be asked along the play to provide numbers that need to satisfy some bounding constraints. These are natural extensions of domination games occurring in the regular cost function theory. In this paper we consider more specifically the case where the constraints to be bounded are regular cost functions, and the long term goal is an ω-regular winning condition. We show that such games are decidable on finite arenas.

Known to be decidable since 1981, there still remains a huge gap between the best known lower and upper bounds for the reach ability problem for vector addition systems with states (VASS). Here the problem is shown PSPACE-complete in the two-dimensional case, vastly improving on the doubly exponential time bound established in 1986 by Howell, Rosier, Huynh and Yen. Cover ability and bounded ness for two-dimensional VASS are also shown PSPACE-complete, and reach ability in two-dimensional VASS and in integer VASS under unary encoding are considered.

We study the satisfiability problem of the logic K 2 = K × K—the two-dimensional variant of unimodal logic, where models are restricted to asynchronous products of two Kripke frames. Gabbay and Shehtman proved in 1998 that this problem is decidable in a tower of exponentials. So far, the best-known lower bound is NEXP-hardness shown by Marx and Mikulás in 2001. Our first main result closes this complexity gap. We show that satisfiability in K 2 is nonelementary. More precisely, we prove that it is k -NEXP-complete, where k is the switching depth (the minimal modal rank among the two dimensions) of the input formula, hereby solving a conjecture of Marx and Mikulás. Using our lower-bound technique also allows us to derive nonelementary lower bounds for the two-dimensional modal logics K4 × K and S5 2 × K, for which only elementary lower bounds were previously known. Moreover, we apply our technique to prove nonelementary lower bounds for the sizes of Feferman-Vaught decompositions with respect to product for any decomposable logic that is at least as expressive as unimodal K, generalizing a recent result by the first author and Lin. For the three-variable fragment FO 3 of first-order logic, we obtain the following two immediate corollaries: the size of Feferman-Vaught decompositions with respect to disjoint sum are inherently nonelementary, and equivalent formulas in Gaifman normal form are inherently nonelementary. Our second main result consists in providing effective elementary (more precisely, doubly exponential) upper bounds for the two-variable fragment FO 2 of first-order logic both for Feferman-Vaught decompositions and for equivalent formulas in Gaifman normal form.

In his seminal paper, Mayr introduced the well-known process rewrite systems (PRS) hierarchy, which contains many well-studied classes of infinite-state systems including pushdown systems (PDS), Petri nets, and PA-processes. A separate development in the term rewriting community introduced the notion of ground tree rewrite systems (GTRS), which is a model that strictly extends PDS while still enjoying desirable decidable properties. There have been striking similarities between the verification problems that have been shown decidable (and undecidable) over GTRS and over models in the PRS hierarchy such as PA and PAD processes. It is open to what extent PRS and GTRS are connected in terms of their expressive power. In this article, we pinpoint the exact connection between GTRS and models in the PRS hierarchy in terms of their expressive power with respect to strong, weak, and branching bisimulation. Among others, this connection allows us to give new insights into the decidability results for subclasses of PRS, such as simpler proofs of known decidability results of verifications problems on PAD.

We study the fixed-parameter complexity of model checking temporal logics on concurrent systems that are modeled as the product of finite systems and where the size of the formula is the parameter. We distinguish between asynchronous product and synchronous product. Sometimes it is possible to show that there is an algorithm for this with running time (\sum_i T_i|)O(1) * f(|\phi|), where the T_i are the component systems and \phi is the formula and f is computable function, thus model checking is fixed-parameter tractable when the size of the formula is the parameter. In this paper we concern ourselves with the question, provided fixed-parameter tractability is known, whether it holds for an elementary function f. Negative answers to this question are provided for modal logic and EF logic: Depending on the mode of synchronization we show the non-existence of such an elementary function f under different assumptions from (parameterized) complexity theory.

Given two pushdown automata, the bisimilarity problem asks whether the infinite transition systems they induce are bisimilar. While this problem is known to be decidable our main result states that it is nonelementary, improving EXPTIME-hardness, which was the best previously known lower bound for this problem. Our lower bound result holds for normed pushdown automata as well.

We prove that language equivalence of deterministic one-counter automata is NL-complete. This improves the superpolynomial time complexity upper bound shown by Valiant and Paterson in 1975. Our main contribution is to prove that two deterministic one-counter automata are inequivalent if and only if they can be distinguished by a word of length polynomial in the size of the two input automata.

One-counter automata (OCA) are pushdown automata which operate only on a unary stack alphabet. We study the computational complexity of model checking computation tree logic (${\mathsf{CTL}}$) on transition systems induced by OCA. A ${\mathsf{PSPACE}}$ upper bound is inherited from the modal $\mu$-calculus for this problem proved by Serre. First, we analyze the periodic behavior of ${\mathsf{CTL}}$ over OCA and derive a model checking algorithm whose running time is exponential only in the number of control locations and a syntactic notion of the formula that we call leftward until depth. In particular, model checking fixed OCA against ${\mathsf{CTL}}$ formulas with a fixed leftward until depth is in $\mathsf{P}$. This generalizes a corresponding recent result of Göller, Mayr, and To for the expression complexity of ${\mathsf{CTL}}$'s fragment ${\mathsf{EF}}$. Second, we prove that already over some fixed OCA, ${\mathsf{CTL}}$ model checking is ${\mathsf{PSPACE}}$-hard, i.e., expression complexity is ${\mathsf{PSPACE}}$-hard. Third, we show that there already exists a fixed ${\mathsf{CTL}}$ formula for which model checking of OCA is ${\mathsf{PSPACE}}$-hard, i.e., data complexity is ${\mathsf{PSPACE}}$-hard as well. To obtain the latter result, we employ two results from complexity theory: (i) Converting a natural number in Chinese remainder presentation into binary presentation is in logspace-uniform ${\mathsf{NC}}^1$ and (ii) ${\mathsf{PSPACE}}$ is $\mathsf{AC}^0$-serializable. We demonstrate that our approach can be used to obtain further results. We show that model checking ${\mathsf{CTL}}$'s fragment ${\mathsf{EF}}$ over OCA is hard for $\mathsf{P}^{\mathsf{NP}}$, thus establishing a matching lower bound. Moreover, we show that the following problem is hard for ${\mathsf{PSPACE}}$: Given a one-counter Markov decision process, a set of target states with counter value zero each, and an initial state, to decide whether the probability that the initial state will eventually reach one of the target states is arbitrarily close to $1$. This improves a recently proved lower bound for every level of the boolean hierarchy shown by Brázdil et al. Finally, we prove that there is a fixed ${\mathsf{CTL}}$ formula for which model checking 2-clock timed automata is ${\mathsf{PSPACE}}$-hard, generalizing a ${\mathsf{PSPACE}}$-hardness result for the combined complexity by Laroussinie, Markey, and Schnoebelen.

We show that bisimulation equivalence of order-two pushdown automata is undecidable. Moreover, we study the lower order problem of higher-order pushdown automata, which asks, given an order-k pushdown automaton and some k' = 2 even when the input k-PDA is deterministic and real-time.

We show that the satisfiability problem for the two-dimensional extension KxK of unimodal K is nonelementary, hereby confirming a conjecture of Marx and Mikulas from 2001. Our lower bound technique allows us to derive further lower bounds for many-dimensional modal logics for which only elementary lower bounds were previously known. We also derive nonelementary lower bounds on the sizes of Feferman-Vaught decompositions w.r.t. product for any decomposable logic that is at least as expressive as unimodal K. Finally, we study the sizes of Feferman-Vaught decompositions and formulas in Gaifman normal form for fixed-variable fragments of first-order logic.

A standard way of building concurrent systems is by composing several individual processes by product operators. We show that even the simplest notion of product operators (i.e. asynchronous products) suffices to increase the complexity of model checking simple logics like Hennessy-Milner (HM) logic and its extension with the reachability operator (EF-logic) from PSPACE to nonelementary. In particular, this nonelementary jump happens for EF-logic when we consider individual processes represented by pushdown systems (indeed, even with only one control state). Using this result, we prove nonelementary lower bounds on the size of formula decompositions provided by Feferman-Vaught (de)compositional methods for HM and EF logics, which reduce theories of asynchronous products to theories of the components. Finally, we show that the same nonelementary lower bounds also hold when we consider the relativization of such compositional methods to finite systems.

We prove that the complexity of the uniform first-order theory of ground tree rewrite graphs is in ATIME(2^{2^{poly(n)}},O(n)). Providing a matching lower bound, we show that there is some fixed ground tree rewrite graph whose first-order theory is hard for ATIME(2^{2^{poly(n)}},poly(n)) with respect to logspace reductions. Finally, we prove that there exists a fixed ground tree rewrite graph together with a single unary predicate in form of a regular tree language such that the resulting structure has a non-elementary first-order theory.

Ground tree rewrite systems (GTRS) are an extension of pushdown systems with the ability to spawn new sub threads that are hierarchically structured. In this paper, we study the following problems over GTRS:(1) model checking EF-logic, (2)weak bi similarity checking against finite systems, and (3) strong similarity against finite systems. Although they are all known to be decidable, we show that problems (1) and (2) have nonelementbisimilarityy, whereasproblem (3) is shown to be in coNEXP by finding a syntactic fragment of EFwhose model checking complexity is complete for PNEXP.The same problems are studied over a more general but decidable extension of GTRS called regular GTRS (RGTRS), where regular rewriting is allowed. Over RGTRS we show that all three problems have non elementary complexity. We also apply our techniques to problems over PA-processes, a well-known class of infinite systems in Mayr's PRS (Process Rewrite Systems) hierarchy. For example, strong bi similarity checking of PA-processes against finite systems is shown to be in coNEXP, yielding a first elementary upper bound for this problem.

One-counter processes (OCPs) are pushdown processes which operate only on a unary stack alphabet. We study the computational complexity of model checking computation tree logic ($\CTL$) over OCPs. A $\PSPACE$ upper bound is inherited from the modal $\mu$-calculus for this problem. First, we analyze the periodic behaviour of $\CTL$ over OCPs and derive a model checking algorithm whose running time is exponential only in the number of control locations and a syntactic notion of the formula that we call leftward until depth. Thus, model checking fixed OCPs against $\CTL$ formulas with a fixed leftward until depth is in $\P$. This generalizes a result of the first author, Mayr, and To for the expression complexity of $\CTL$'s fragment $\EF$. Second, we prove that already over some fixed OCP, $\CTL$ model checking is $\PSPACE$-hard. Third, we show that there already exists a fixed $\CTL$ formula for which model checking of OCPs is $\PSPACE$-hard. For the latter, we employ two results from complexity theory: (i) Converting a natural number in Chinese remainder presentation into binary presentation is in logspace-uniform $\NC^1$ and (ii) $\PSPACE$ is $\AC^0$-serializable. We demonstrate that our approach can be used to answer further open questions.

One-counter processes are pushdown systems over a singleton stack alphabet (plus a stack-bottom symbol). We study the complexity of two closely related verification problems over one-counter processes: model checking with the temporal logic EF, where formulas are given as directed acyclic graphs, and weak bisimilarity checking against finite systems. We show that both problems are PNP-complete. This is achieved by establishing a close correspondence with the membership problem for a natural fragment of Presburger arithmetic, which we show to be PNP-complete. This fragment is also a suitable representation for the global versions of the problems. We also show that there already exists a fixed EF formula(resp. a fixed finite system) such that model checking (resp. weak bisimulation) over one-counter processes is hard for PNP[log]. However, the complexity drops to P if the one-counter process is fixed.

Abstract We study satisfiability and infinite-state model checking in ICPDL, which extends Propositional Dynamic Logic (PDL) with intersection and converse operators on programs. The two main results of this paper are that (i) satisfiability is in 2ΕΧΡΤΙΜΕ, thus 2ΕΧΡΤΙΜΕ-complete by an existing lower bound, and (ii) infinite-state model checking of basic process algebras and pushdown systems is also 2ΕΧΡΤΙΜΕ-complete. Both upper bounds are obtained by polynomial time computable reductions to ω-regular tree satisfiability in ICPDL, a reasoning problem that we introduce specifically for this purpose. This problem is then reduced to the emptiness problem for alternating two-way automata on infinite trees. Our approach to (i) also provides a shorter and more elegant proof of Danecki's difficult result that satisfiability in IPDL is in 2ΕΧΡΤΙΜΕ. We prove the lower bound(s) for infinite-state model checking using an encoding of alternating Turing machines.