Browsing by Author "Diekert, Volker"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5

Open Access
Complexity results and the growths of hairpin completions of regular languages
(2010) Diekert, Volker; Kopecki, Steffen
The hairpin completion is a natural operation on formal languages which has been inspired by molecular phenomena in biology and by DNA-computing. In 2009 we presented a (polynomial time) decision algorithm to decide regularity of the hairpin completion. In this paper we provide four new results: 1.) We show that the decision problem is NL-complete. 2.) There is a polynomial time decision algorithm which runs in time O(n8), this improves our previous results, which provided O(n^{20}). 3.) For the one-sided case (which is closer to DNA computing) the time is O(n2), only. 4.) The hairpin completion of a regular language is unambiguous linear context-free. This result allows to compute the growth (generating function) of the hairpin completion and to compare it with the growth of the underlying regular language.
Open Access
Existential and positive theories of equations in graph products
(2001) Diekert, Volker; Lohrey, Markus
We prove that the existential theory of equations with normalized rational constraints in a fixed graph product of finite monoids, free monoids, and free groups is PSPACE-complete. Under certain restrictions this result also holds if the graph product is part of the input. As the second main result we prove that the positive theory of equations with recognizable constraints in graph products of finite and free groups is decidable.
Open Access
Fragments of first-order logic over infinite words
(2009) Diekert, Volker; Kufleitner, Manfred
We give topological and algebraic characterizations as well as language theoretic descriptions of the following subclasses of first-order logic for omega-languages: Sigma2, FO2, the intersection of FO2 and Sigma2, and Delta2 (and by duality Pi2 and the intersection of FO2 and Pi2). These descriptions extend the respective results for finite words. In particular, we relate the above fragments to language classes of certain (unambiguous) polynomials. An immediate consequence is the decidability of the membership problem of these classes, but this was shown before by Wilke and Bojanczyk and is therefore not our main focus. The paper is about the interplay of algebraic, topological, and language theoretic properties.
Open Access
Makanin's algorithm for solving word equations with regular constraints
(1998) Diekert, Volker
We give a self-contained proof of a fundamental result of Makanin (1977), which solves the satisfiability problem of equations with constants over free monoids. Our presentation of Makanin's algorithm is borrows Schulz (1992a), where Makanin's result is extended to the case where solutions are restricted by imposing regular constraints on the variables. This report appears (with minor modifications) as a chapter of the new book of M. Lothaire Algebraic Combinatorics on Words.
Open Access
Properties of graphs specified by a regular language
(2022) Diekert, Volker; Fernau, Henning; Wolf, Petra
Traditionally, graph algorithms get a single graph as input, and then they should decide if this graph satisfies a certain property Φ. What happens if this question is modified in a way that we get a possibly infinite family of graphs as an input, and the question is if there is a graph satisfying Φin the family? We approach this question by using formal languages for specifying families of graphs, in particular by regular sets of words. We show that certain graph properties can be decided by studying the syntactic monoid of the specification language L if a certain torsion condition is satisfied. This condition holds trivially if L is regular. More specifically, we use a natural binary encoding of finite graphs over a binary alphabet Σ, and we define a regular set G⊆Σ∗such that every nonempty word w∈Gdefines a finite and nonempty graph. Also, graph properties can then be syntactically defined as languages over Σ. Then, we ask whether the automaton Aspecifies some graph satisfying a certain property Φ. Our structural results show that we can answer this question for all “typical” graph properties. In order to show our results, we split L into a finite union of subsets and every subset of this union defines in a natural way a single finite graph F where some edges and vertices are marked. The marked graph in turn defines an infinite graph F∞and therefore the family of finite subgraphs of F∞where F appears as an induced subgraph. This yields a geometric description of all graphs specified by L based on splitting L into finitely many pieces; then using the notion of graph retraction, we obtain an easily understandable description of the graphs in each piece.