Our main result is a succinct counterpoint to Courcelle's meta-theorem as follows: every cw-nontrivial monadic second-order (MSO) property is either NP-hard or coNP-hard over graphs given by succinct representations. Succint representations are Boolean circuits computing the adjacency relation. Cw-nontrivial properties are those which have infinitely many models and infinitely many countermodels with bounded cliquewidth. Moreover, we explore what happens when the cw-nontriviality condition is dropped and show that, under a reasonable complexity assumption, the previous dichotomy fails, even for questions expressible in first-order logic.

We prove general complexity lower bounds on automata networks, in the style of Rice’s theorem, but in the computable world. Our main result is that testing any fixed first-order property on the dynamics of an automata network is either trivial, or NP-hard, or coNP-hard. Moreover, there exist such properties that are arbitrarily high in the polynomial-time hierarchy. We also prove that testing a first-order property given as input on an automata network (also part of the input) is PSPACE-hard. Besides, we show that, under a natural effectiveness condition, any nontrivial property of the limit set of a nondeterministic network is PSPACE-hard. We also show that it is PSPACE-hard to separate deterministic networks with a very high and a very low number of limit configurations; however, the problem of deciding whether the number of limit configurations is maximal up to a polynomial quantity belongs to the polynomial-time hierarchy.

Weighted automata over the max-plus semiring S are closely related to finitely generated semigroups of matrices over S. In this paper, we use results in automata theory to study two quantities associated with sets of matrices: the joint spectral radius and the ultimate rank. We prove that these two quantities are not computable over the tropical semiring, i.e. there is no algorithm that takes as input a finite set of matrices M and provides as output the joint spectral radius (resp. the ultimate rank) of M. On the other hand, we prove that the joint spectral radius is nevertheless approximable and we exhibit restricted cases in which the joint spectral radius and the ultimate rank are computable. To reach this aim, we study the problem of comparing functions computed by weighted automata over the tropical semiring. This problem is known to be undecidable and we prove that it remains undecidable in some specific subclasses of automata.

We construct a cellular automaton (CA) with a sofic and mixing limit set and then construct a stable CA with the same limit set, showing there exist subshifts that can be limit sets of both stable and unstable CAs, answering a question raised by A. Maass.

A cellular automaton (CA) is a parallel synchronous computing model, which consists in a juxtaposition of finite automata (cells) whose state evolves according to that of their neighbors. Its trace is the set of infinite words representing the sequence of states taken by some particular cell. In this paper we study the ultimate trace of CA and partial CA (a CA restricted to a particular subshift). The ultimate trace is the trace observed after a long time run of the CA. We give sufficient conditions for a set of infinite words to be the trace of some CA and prove the undecidability of all properties over traces that are stable by ultimate coincidence.

A cellular automaton is a parallel synchronous computing model, which consists in a juxtaposition of finite automata whose state evolves according to that of their neighbors. It induces a dynamical system on the set of configurations, \ie the infinite sequences of cell states. The limit set of the cellular automaton is the set of configurations which can be reached arbitrarily late in the evolution. In this paper, we prove that all properties of limit sets of cellular automata with binary-state cells are undecidable, except surjectivity. This is a refinement of the classical ``Rice Theorem'' that Kari proved on cellular automata with arbitrary state sets.