Lukas Fleischer

On the complexity of the cayley semigroup membership problem

We investigate the complexity of deciding, given a multiplication table representing a semigroup S, a subset X of S and an element t of S, whether t can be expressed as a product of elements of X. It is well-known that this problem is NL-complete and that the more general Cayley groupoid membership problem, where the multiplication table is not required to be associative, is P-complete. For groups, the problem can be solved in deterministic log-space which raised the question of determining the exact complexity of this variant. Barrington, Kadau, Lange and McKenzie showed that for Abelian groups and for certain solvable groups, the problem is contained in the complexity class FOLL and they concluded that these variants are not hard for any complexity class containing PARITY. The more general case of arbitrary groups remained open. In this work, we show that for both groups and for commutative semigroups, the problem is solvable in qAC^0 (quasi-polynomial size circuits of constant depth with unbounded fan-in) and conclude that these variants are also not hard for any class containing PARITY. Moreover, we prove that NL-completeness already holds for the classes of 0-simple semigroups and nilpotent semigroups. Together with our results on groups and commutative semigroups, we prove the existence of a natural class of finite semigroups which generates a variety of finite semigroups with NL-complete Cayley semigroup membership, while the Cayley semigroup membership problem for the class itself is not NL-hard. We also discuss applications of our technique to FOLL.

The Intersection Problem for Finite Monoids

We investigate the intersection problem for finite monoids, which asks for a given set of regular languages, represented by recognizing morphisms to finite monoids from a variety V, whether there exists a word contained in their intersection. Our main result is that the problem is PSPACE-complete if V is contained in DS and NP-complete if V is non-trivial and contained in DO. Our NP-algorithm for the case that V is contained in DO uses novel methods, based on compression techniques and combinatorial properties of DO. We also show that the problem is log-space reducible to the intersection problem for deterministic finite automata (DFA) and that a variant of the problem is log-space reducible to the membership problem for transformation monoids. In light of these reductions, our hardness results can be seen as a generalization of both a classical result by Kozen and a theorem by Beaudry, McKenzie and Therien.

Efficient Algorithms for Morphisms over Omega-Regular Languages

Morphisms to finite semigroups can be used for recognizing omega-regular languages. The so-called strongly recognizing morphisms can be seen as a deterministic computation model which provides minimal objects (known as the syntactic morphism) and a trivial complementation procedure. We give a quadratic-time algorithm for computing the syntactic morphism from any given strongly recognizing morphism, thereby showing that minimization is easy as well. In addition, we give algorithms for efficiently solving various decision problems for weakly recognizing morphisms. Weakly recognizing morphism are often smaller than their strongly recognizing counterparts. Finally, we describe the language operations needed for converting formulas in monadic second-order logic (MSO) into strongly recognizing morphisms, and we give some experimental results.

Block products and nesting negations in FO2

The alternation hierarchy in two-variable first-order logic FO2[ < ] over words was recently shown to be decidable by Kufleitner and Weil, and independently by Krebs and Straubing. In this paper we consider a similar hierarchy, reminiscent of the half levels of the dot-depth hierarchy or the Straubing-Therien hierarchy. The fragment \(\Sigma^2_m\) of FO2 is defined by disallowing universal quantifiers and having at most m − 1 nested negations. One can view \(\Sigma^2_m\) as the formulas in FO2 which have at most m blocks of quantifiers on every path of their parse tree, and the first block is existential. Thus, the m th level of the FO2-alternation hierarchy is the Boolean closure of \(\Sigma^2_m\). We give an effective characterization of \(\Sigma^2_m\), i.e., for every integer m one can decide whether a given regular language is definable by a two-variable first-order formula with negation nesting depth at most m. More precisely, for every m we give ω-terms U m and V m such that an FO2-definable language is in \(\Sigma^2_m\) if and only if its ordered syntactic monoid satisfies the identity U m ≤ V m . Among other techniques, the proof relies on an extension of block products to ordered monoids.

The Intersection Problem for Finite Semigroups.

We investigate the intersection problem for finite semigroups, which asks for a given set of regular languages, represented by recognizing morphisms to finite semigroups, whether there exists a word contained in their intersection. We introduce compressibility measures as a useful tool to classify the intersection problem for certain classes of finite semigroups into circuit complexity classes and Turing machine complexity classes. Using this framework, we obtain a new and simple proof that for groups and commutative semigroups, the problem is contained in \(\mathsf {NP}\). We uncover certain structural and non-structural properties determining the complexity of the intersection problem for varieties of semigroups containing only trivial submonoids. More specifically, we prove \(\mathsf {NP}\)-hardness for classes of semigroups having a property called unbounded order and for the class of all nilpotent semigroups of bounded order. On the contrary, we show that bounded order and commutativity imply containment in the circuit complexity class \(\mathsf {qAC}^k\) (for some \(k \in \mathbb {N}\)) and decidability in quasi-polynomial time. We also establish connections to the monoid variant of the problem.

Green’s relations in deterministic finite automata

Green’s relations are a fundamental tool in the structure theory of semigroups. They can be defined by reachability in the (right/left/two-sided) Cayley graph. The equivalence classes of Green’s relations then correspond to the strongly connected components. We study the complexity of Green’s relations in semigroups generated by transformations on a finite set. We show that, in the worst case, the number of equivalence classes is in the same order of magnitude as the number of elements. Another important parameter is the maximal length of a chain of strongly connected components. Our main contribution is an exponential lower bound for this parameter. There is a simple construction for an arbitrary set of generators. However, the proof for a constant size alphabet is rather involved. We also investigate the special cases of unary and binary alphabets. All these results are extended to deterministic finite automata and their syntactic semigroups.

Green’s relations in finite transformation semigroups

We consider the complexity of Green’s relations when the semigroup is given by transformations on a finite set. Green’s relations can be defined by reachability in the (right/left/two-sided) Cayley graph. The equivalence classes then correspond to the strongly connected components. It is not difficult to show that, in the worst case, the number of equivalence classes is in the same order of magnitude as the number of elements. Another important parameter is the maximal length of a chain of components. Our main contribution is an exponential lower bound for this parameter. There is a simple construction for an arbitrary set of generators. However, the proof for constant alphabet is rather involved. Our results also apply to automata and their syntactic semigroups.

The Half-Levels of the FO2 Alternation Hierarchy

The alternation hierarchy in two-variable first-order logic FO2[<] over words was shown to be decidable by Kufleitner and Weil, and independently by Krebs and Straubing. We consider a similar hierarchy, reminiscent of the half levels of the dot-depth hierarchy or the Straubing-Thérien hierarchy. The fragment Σm2

Church-Rosser Systems, Codes with Bounded Synchronization Delay and Local Rees Extensions

{{\Sigma }^{2}_{m}}

Operations on Weakly Recognizing Morphisms

of FO2 is defined by disallowing universal quantifiers and having at most m−1 nested negations. The Boolean closure of Σm2