Note: The weak variant of our conjecture in a stronger form has been recently solved by Mikhail Volkov arXiv:2306.13317, together with several new results concerning our problem
A deterministic finite (semi)automaton is primitive if its transition monoid (semigroup) acting on the set of states has no non-trivial congruences. It is synchronizing if it contains a constant map (transformation). In analogy to synchronizing groups, we study the possibility of characterizing automata that are synchronizing if primitive. We prove that the implication holds for several classes of automata. In particular, we show it for automata whose every letter induce either a permutation or a semiconstant transformation (an idempotent with one point of contraction) unless all letters are of the first type. We propose and discuss two conjectures about possible more general characterizations.
In [1], we introduced the weakly synchronizing languages for probabilistic automata. In this report, we show that the emptiness problem of weakly synchronizing languages for probabilistic automata is undecidable. This implies that the decidability result of [1-3] for the emptiness problem of weakly synchronizing language is incorrect.
We follow language theoretic approach to synchronizing automata and Černý's conjecture initiated in a series of recent papers. We find a precise lower bound for the reset complexity of a principal ideal languages. Also we show a strict connection between principal left ideals and synchronizing automata. We characterize regular languages whose minimal deterministic finite automaton is synchronizing and possesses a reset word belonging to the recognized language.
In this paper we address the question of synchronizing random automata in the critical settings of almost-group automata. Group automata are automata where all letters act as permutations on the set of states, and they are not synchronizing (unless they have one state). In almost-group automata, one of the letters acts as a permutation on $n-1$ states, and the others as permutations. We prove that this small change is enough for automata to become synchronizing with high probability. More precisely, we establish that the probability that a strongly connected almost-group automaton is not synch…
We present a new series of examples of binary slowly synchronizing automata with sink state. The reset threshold of the $n$-state automaton in this series is $\frac{n^2}{4}+2n-9$. This improves on the previously known lower bound for the maximum reset threshold of binary synchronizing $n$-state automata with sink state.
Using combinatorial properties of incomplete sets in a free monoid we construct a series of n-state deterministic automata with zero whose shortest synchronizing word has length n^2/4+n/2-1.
We study synchronizing automata with the shortest reset words of relatively large length. First, we refine the Frankl-Pin result on the length of the shortest words of rank $m$, and the Béal, Berlinkov, Perrin, and Steinberg results on the length of the shortest reset words in one-cluster automata. The obtained results are useful in computation aimed in extending the class of small automata for which the Černý conjecture is verified and discovering new automata with special properties regarding synchronization.
We study ideal languages generated by a single word. We provide an algorithm to construct a strongly connected synchronizing automaton for which such a language serves as the language of synchronizing words. Also we present a compact formula to calculate the syntactic complexity of this language.
We study representations of ideal languages by means of strongly connected synchronizing automata. For every finitely generated ideal language L we construct such an automaton with at most 2^n states, where n is the maximal length of words in L. Our constructions are based on the De Bruijn graph.
We study the problem of synchronization of automata with random inputs. We present a series of automata such that the expected number of steps until synchronization is exponential in the number of states. At the same time, we show that the expected number of letters to synchronize any pair of the famous Cerny automata is at most cubic in the number of states.
Most slowly synchronizing automata over binary alphabets are circular, i.e., containing a letter permuting the states in a single cycle, and their set of synchronizing words has maximal state complexity, which also implies complete reachability.Here, we take a closer look at generalized circular and completely reachable automata. We derive that over a binary alphabet every completely reachable automaton must be circular, a consequence of a structural result stating that completely reachable automata over strictly less letters than states always contain permutational letters. We state sufficien…
Instead of looking at the lengths of synchronizing words as in Černý's conjecture, we look at the switch count of such words, that is, we only count the switches from one letter to another. Where the synchronizing words of the Černý automata $\mathcal{C}_n$ have switch count linear in $n$, we wonder whether synchronizing automata exist for which every synchronizing word has quadratic switch count. The answer is positive: we prove that switch count has the same complexity as synchronizing word length. We give some series of synchronizing automata yielding quadratic switch count, the best one re…
We have improved an algorithm generating synchronizing automata with a large length of the shortest reset words. This has been done by refining some known results concerning bounds on the reset length. Our improvements make possible to consider a number of conjectures and open questions concerning synchronizing automata, checking them for automata with a small number of states and discussing the results. In particular, we have verified the Černý conjecture for all binary automata with at most 12 states, and all ternary automata with at most 8 states.
We present several infinite series of synchronizing automata for which the minimum length of reset words is close to the square of the number of states. All these automata are tightly related to primitive digraphs with large exponent.
Cerny's conjecture is a longstanding open problem in automata theory. We study two different concepts, which allow to approach it from a new angle. The first one is the triple rendezvous time, i.e., the length of the shortest word mapping three states onto a single one. The second one is the synchronizing probability function of an automaton, a recently introduced tool which reinterprets the synchronizing phenomenon as a two-player game, and allows to obtain optimal strategies through a Linear Program. Our contribution is twofold. First, by coupling two different novel approaches based on the …
We present an infinite series of $n$-state Eulerian automata whose reset words have length at least $(n^2-3)/2$. This improves the current lower bound on the length of shortest reset words in Eulerian automata. We conjecture that $(n^2-3)/2$ also forms an upper bound for this class and we experimentally verify it for small automata by an exhaustive computation.
A word w is called a synchronizing (recurrent, reset) word of a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) if w brings all states of the automaton to some state; a DFA that has a synchronizing word is said to be synchronizing. Cerny conjectured in 1964 that every n-state synchronizing DFA possesses a synchronizing word of length at most (n -1)2. We consider automaton with aperiodic transition monoid (such automaton is called aperiodic). We show that every synchronizing n-state aperiodic automaton has a synchronizing word of length at most n(n-2)+1. Thus, for aperiodic automaton as well as for automa…
We use a semigroup-theoretic construction by Peter Higgins in order to produce, for each even $n$, an $n$-state and 3-letter synchronizing automaton with the following two features: 1) all its input letters act as idempotent selfmaps of rank $\dfrac{n}2$; 2) its reset threshold is asymptotically equal to $\dfrac{n^2}2$. In the revised version a few inaccuracies (spotted by the anonymous referees of the previous version) have been removed and several relevant references have been added.
A word $w$ of letters on edges of underlying graph $Γ$ of deterministic finite automaton (DFA) is called synchronizing if $w$ sends all states of the automaton to a unique state. J. Černy discovered in 1964 a sequence of $n$-state complete DFA possessing a minimal synchronizing word of length $(n-1)^2$. The hypothesis, well known today as Černy conjecture, claims that $(n-1)^2$ is a precise upper bound on the length of such a word over alphabet $Σ$ of letters on edges of $Γ$ for every complete $n$-state DFA. The hypothesis was formulated distinctly in 1966 by Starke. A special classes of matri…
In 1964 Černý conjectured that each $n$-state synchronizing automaton posesses a reset word of length at most $(n-1)^2$. From the other side the best known upper bound on the reset length (minimum length of reset words) is cubic in $n$. Thus the main problem here is to prove quadratic (in $n$) upper bounds. Since 1964, this problem has been solved for few special classes of \sa. One of this result is due to Kari \cite{Ka03} for automata with Eulerian digraphs. In this paper we introduce a new approach to prove quadratic upper bounds and explain it in terms of Markov chains and Perron-Frobenius…
A coloring of a digraph with a fixed out-degree k is a distribution of k labels over the edges resulting in a deterministic finite automaton. An automaton is called synchronizing if there exists a word which sends all states of the automaton to a single state. In the present paper we study connections between spectral and synchronizing properties of digraphs. We show that if a coloring of a digraph is not synchronizing, then the stationary distribution of an associated Markov chain has a partition of coordinates into blocks of equal sum. Moreover, if there exists such a partition, then there e…
We introduce two generalizations of synchronizability to automata with transitions weighted in an arbitrary semiring K=(K,+,*,0,1). (or equivalently, to finite sets of matrices in K^nxn.) Let us call a matrix A location-synchronizing if there exists a column in A consisting of nonzero entries such that all the other columns of A are filled by zeros. If additionally all the entries of this designated column are the same, we call A synchronizing. Note that these notions coincide for stochastic matrices and also in the Boolean semiring. A set M of matrices in K^nxn is called (location-)synchroniz…
We present a few classes of synchronizing automata exhibiting certain extremal properties with regard to synchronization. The first is a series of automata with subsets whose shortest extending words are of length $\varTheta(n^2)$, where $n$ is the number of states of the automaton. This disproves a conjecture that every subset in a strongly connected synchronizing automaton is $cn$-extendable, for some constant $c$, and in particular, shows that the cubic upper bound on the length of the shortest reset words cannot be improved generally by means of the extension method. A detailed analysis sh…
Pin proved that every circular automaton with a prime number of states containing a non-permutation is synchronizing. In this paper, we investigate the synchronization of circular semi-flower automata. We first prove that every semi-flower automaton is a one-cluster automaton. Subsequently, we prove that every semi-flower automaton containing a 1-cycle is synchronizing. Further, we prove that every circular semi-flower automaton with an odd number of states containing a 2-cycle is synchronizing.
Register automata (RAs) are finite automata extended with a finite set of registers to store and compare data from an infinite domain. We study the concept of synchronizing data words in RAs: does there exist a data word that sends all states of the RA to a single state? For deterministic RAs with k registers (k-DRAs), we prove that inputting data words with 2k+1 distinct data from the infinite data domain is sufficient to synchronize. We show that the synchronization problem for DRAs is in general PSPACE-complete, and it is NLOGSPACE-complete for 1-DRAs. For nondeterministic RAs (NRAs), we sh…
We present several infinite series of synchronizing automata for which the minimum length of reset words is close to the square of the number of states. These automata are closely related to primitive digraphs with large exponent.
Under the assumption $\mathcal{P} \neq \mathcal{NP}$, we prove that two natural problems from the theory of synchronizing automata cannot be solved in polynomial time. The first problem is to decide whether a given reachable partial automaton is synchronizing. The second one is, given an $n$-state binary complete synchronizing automaton, to compute its reset threshold within performance ratio less than $d \ln{(n)}$ for a specific constant $d>0$.
It was conjectured by Černý in 1964, that a synchronizing DFA on $n$ states always has a synchronizing word of length at most $(n-1)^2$, and he gave a sequence of DFAs for which this bound is reached. Until now a full analysis of all DFAs reaching this bound was only given for $n \leq 5$, and with bounds on the number of symbols for $n \leq 12$. Here we give the full analysis for $n \leq 7$, without bounds on the number of symbols. For PFAs (partial automata) on $\leq 7$ states we do a similar analysis as for DFAs and find the maximal shortest synchronizing word lengths, exceeding $(n-1)^2$ fo…
In this paper we are dealing with the issue of finding possibly short synchronizing words in automata with weight assigned to each letter in the alphabet $Σ$. First we discuss some complexity problems, and then we present new approximation algorithm in four variations.
We give a new characterization of primitive permutation groups tied to the notion of completely reachable automata. Also, we introduce sync-maximal permutation groups tied to the state complexity of the set of synchronizing words of certain associated automata and show that they are contained between the $2$-homogeneous and the primitive groups. Lastly, we define $k$-reachable groups in analogy with synchronizing groups and motivated by our characterization of primitive permutation groups. But the results show that a $k$-reachable permutation group of degree $n$ with $6 \le k \le n - 6$ is eit…
In this paper we combine the algebraic properties of Mealy machines generating self-similar groups and the combinatorial properties of the corresponding deterministic finite automata (DFA). In particular, we relate bounded automata to finitely generated synchronizing automata and characterize finite automata groups in terms of nilpotency of the corresponding DFA. Moreover, we present a decidable sufficient condition to have free semigroups in an automaton group. A series of examples and applications is widely discussed, in particular we show a way to color the De Bruijn automata into Mealy aut…
A deterministic finite automaton is synchronizing if there exists a word that sends all states of the automaton to the same state. Černý conjectured in 1964 that a synchronizing automaton with $n$ states has a synchronizing word of length at most $(n-1)^2$. We introduce the notion of aperiodically $1-$contracting automata and prove that in these automata all subsets of the state set are reachable, so that in particular they are synchronizing. Furthermore, we give a sufficient condition under which the Černý conjecture holds for aperiodically $1-$contracting automata. As a special case, we prov…
The set of synchronizing words of a given $n$-state automaton forms a regular language recognizable by an automaton with $2^n - n$ states. The size of a recognizing automaton for the set of synchronizing words is linked to computational problems related to synchronization and to the length of synchronizing words. Hence, it is natural to investigate synchronizing automata extremal with this property, i.e., such that the minimal deterministic automaton for the set of synchronizing words has $2^n - n$ states. The sync-maximal permutation groups have been introduced in [{\sc S. Hoffmann}, Complete…
In this paper, we show that every D3-directing CNFA can be mapped uniquely to a DFA with the same synchronizing word length. This implies that Černý's conjecture generalizes to CNFAs and that the general upper bound for the length of a shortest D3-directing word is equal to the Pin-Frankl bound for DFAs. As a second consequence, for several classes of CNFAs sharper bounds are established. Finally, our results allow us to detect all critical CNFAs on at most 6 states. It turns out that only very few critical CNFAs exist.
This article focuses on subset reachability in synchronizing automata. First, we provide families of synchronizing automata with subsets which cannot be reached with short words. These families do not fulfil Don's Conjecture about subset reachability. Moreover, they show that some subsets need exponentially long words to be reached, and that the restriction of the conjecture to included subsets also does not hold. Second, we analyze completely reachable automata and provide a counterexample to the conjecture of Bondar and Volkov about the so-called $Γ_1$-graph. We finally prove an alternative …
Motivated by the randomized generation of slowly synchronizing automata, we study automata made of permutation letters and a merging letter of rank $ n\!-\!1 $. We present a constructive randomized procedure to generate synchronizing automata of that kind with (potentially) large alphabet size based on recent results on \textit{primitive} sets of matrices. We report numerical results showing that our algorithm finds automata with much larger reset threshold than a mere uniform random generation and we present new families of automata with reset threshold of $ Ω(n^2/4) $. We finally report theo…
We consider the problem {\sc Max Sync Set} of finding a maximum synchronizing set of states in a given automaton. We show that the decision version of this problem is PSPACE-complete and investigate the approximability of {\sc Max Sync Set} for binary and weakly acyclic automata (an automaton is called weakly acyclic if it contains no cycles other than self-loops). We prove that, assuming $P \ne NP$, for any $\varepsilon > 0$, the {\sc Max Sync Set} problem cannot be approximated in polynomial time within a factor of $O(n^{1 - \varepsilon})$ for weakly acyclic $n$-state automata with alphabet …
A synchronizing word for an automaton is a word that brings that automaton into one and the same state, regardless of the starting position. Cerny conjectured in 1964 that if a n-state deterministic automaton has a synchronizing word, then it has a synchronizing word of size at most (n-1)^2. Berlinkov recently made a breakthrough in the probabilistic analysis of synchronization by proving that with high probability, an automaton has a synchronizing word. In this article, we prove that with high probability an automaton admits a synchronizing word of length smaller than n^(1+ε), and therefore t…
We show that if a semisimple synchronizing automaton with $n$ states has a minimal reachable non-unary subset of cardinality $r\ge 2$, then there is a reset word of length at most $(n-1)D(2,r,n)$, where $D(2,r,n)$ is the $2$-packing number for families of $r$-subsets of $[1,n]$.
The question if a deterministic finite automaton admits a software reset in the form of a so-called synchronizing word can be answered in polynomial time. In this paper, we extend this algorithmic question to deterministic automata beyond finite automata. We prove that the question of synchronizability becomes undecidable even when looking at deterministic one-counter automata. This is also true for another classical mild extension of regularity, namely that of deterministic one-turn push-down automata. However, when we combine both restrictions, we arrive at scenarios with a PSPACE-complete (…
We refine a uniform algebraic approach for deriving upper bounds on reset thresholds of synchronizing automata. We express the condition that an automaton is synchronizing in terms of linear algebra, and obtain upper bounds for the reset thresholds of automata with a short word of a small rank. The results are applied to make several improvements in the area. We improve the best general upper bound for reset thresholds of finite prefix codes (Huffman codes): we show that an $n$-state synchronizing decoder has a reset word of length at most $O(n \log^3 n)$. In addition to that, we prove that th…
Fast matching of regular expressions with bounded repetition, aka counting, such as (ab){50,100}, i.e., matching linear in the length of the text and independent of the repetition bounds, has been an open problem for at least two decades. We show that, for a wide class of regular expressions with counting, which we call synchronizing, fast matching is possible. We empirically show that the class covers nearly all counting used in usual applications of regex matching. This complexity result is based on an improvement and analysis of a recent matching algorithm that compiles regexes to determini…
In this paper we describe an approach to finding the shortest reset word of a finite synchronizing automaton by using a SAT solver. We use this approach to perform an experimental study of the length of the shortest reset word of a finite synchronizing automaton. The largest automata we considered had 100 states. The results of the experiments allow us to formulate a hypothesis that the length of the shortest reset word of a random finite automaton with $n$ states and 2 input letters with high probability is sublinear with respect to $n$ and can be estimated as $1.95 n^{0.55}.$
We study a connection between synchronizing automata and its set $M$ of minimal reset words, i.e., such that no proper factor is a reset word. We first show that any synchronizing automaton having the set of minimal reset words whose set of factors does not contain a word of length at most $\frac{1}{4}\min\{|u|: u\in I\}+\frac{1}{16}$ has a reset word of length at most $(n-\frac{1}{2})^{2}$ In the last part of the paper we focus on the existence of synchronizing automata with a given ideal $I$ that serves as the set of reset words. To this end, we introduce the notion of the tail structure of …
We generalize the concept of synchronizing words for finite automata, which map all states of the automata to the same state, to deterministic visibly push-down automata. Here, a synchronizing word w does not only map all states to the same state but also fulfills some conditions on the stack content of each run after reading w. We consider three types of these stack constraints: after reading w, the stack (1) is empty in each run, (2) contains the same sequence of stack symbols in each run, or (3) contains an arbitrary sequence which is independent of the other runs. We show that in contrast …
Berlinkov has suggested an algorithm that, given a deterministic finite automaton $\mathcal{A}$, verifies whether or not $\mathcal{A}$ is synchronizing in linear (of the number of states and letters) expected time. We present a modification of Berlinkov's algorithm which we have implemented and tested. Our experiments show that the implementation outperforms the standard quadratic algorithm even for automata of modest size and allow us to give a statistically accurate approximation of the ratio of non-synchronizing automata amongst all automata with a given number of states.
It was conjectured by Černý in 1964 that a synchronizing DFA on $n$ states always has a shortest synchronizing word of length at most $(n-1)^2$, and he gave a sequence of DFAs for which this bound is reached. In this paper, we investigate the role of the alphabet size. For each possible alphabet size, we count DFAs on $n \le 6$ states which synchronize in $(n-1)^2 - e$ steps, for all $e < 2\lceil n/2 \rceil$. Furthermore, we give constructions of automata with any number of states, and $3$, $4$, or $5$ symbols, which synchronize slowly, namely in $n^2 - 3n + O(1)$ steps. In addition, our resul…
We consider the first problem that appears in any application of synchronizing automata, namely, the problem of deciding whether or not a given $n$-state $k$-letter automaton is synchronizing. First we generalize results from \cite{RandSynch},\cite{On2Problems} for the case of strongly connected partial automata. Specifically, for $k>1$ we show that an automaton is synchronizing with probability $1-O(\frac{1}{n^{0.5k}})$ and present an algorithm with linear in $n$ expected time, while the best known algorithm is quadratic on each instance. This results are interesting due to their applications…
We study the computational complexity of various problems related to synchronization of weakly acyclic automata, a subclass of widely studied aperiodic automata. We provide upper and lower bounds on the length of a shortest word synchronizing a weakly acyclic automaton or, more generally, a subset of its states, and show that the problem of approximating this length is hard. We investigate the complexity of finding a synchronizing set of states of maximum size. We also show inapproximability of the problem of computing the rank of a subset of states in a binary weakly acyclic automaton and pro…
We approach the problem of computing a $D_{3}$-synchronizing word of minimum length for a given nondeterministic automaton via its encoding as an instance of SAT and invoking a SAT solver. We also present some experimental results.
We study extremal and algorithmic questions of subset and careful synchronization in monotonic automata. We show that several synchronization problems that are hard in general automata can be solved in polynomial time in monotonic automata, even without knowing a linear order of the states preserved by the transitions. We provide asymptotically tight bounds on the maximum length of a shortest word synchronizing a subset of states in a monotonic automaton and a shortest word carefully synchronizing a partial monotonic automaton. We provide a complexity framework for dealing with problems for mo…
Planar automata seems to be representative of the synchronizing behavior of deterministic finite state automata. We conjecture that Černy's conjecture holds true, if and only if, it holds true for planar automata. In this paper we have gathered some evidence concerning this conjecture. This evidence amounts to show that the class of planar automata is representative of the algorithmic hardness of synchronization
Motivated by recent results relating synchronizing DFAs and primitive sets, we tackle the synchronization process and the related longstanding Černý conjecture by studying the primitivity phenomenon for sets of nonnegative matrices having neither zero-rows nor zero-columns. We formulate the primitivity process in the setting of a two-player probabilistic game and we make use of convex optimization techniques to describe its behavior. We develop a tool for approximating and upper bounding the exponent of any primitive set and supported by numerical results we state a conjecture that, if true, w…
A set of nonnegative matrices $\mathcal{M}=\{M_1, M_2, \ldots, M_k\}$ is called primitive if there exist indices $i_1, i_2, \ldots, i_m$ such that $M_{i_1} M_{i_2} \ldots M_{i_m}$ is positive (i.e. has all its entries $>0$). The length of the shortest such product is called the exponent of $\mathcal{M}$. The concept of primitive sets of matrices comes up in a number of problems within control theory, non-homogeneous Markov chains, automata theory etc. Recently, connections between synchronizing automata and primitive sets of matrices were established. In the present paper, we significantly str…
The Černý's conjecture states that for every synchronizing automaton with n states there exists a reset word of length not exceeding (n-11)^2. We prove this conjecture for a class of automata preserving certain properties of intervals of a directed graph. Our result unifies and generalizes some earlier results obtained by other authors.
This paper situates itself in the theory of variable length codes and of finite automata where the concepts of completeness and synchronization play a central role. In this theoretical setting, we investigate the problem of finding upper bounds to the minimal length of synchronizing words and incompletable words of a finite language X in terms of the length of the words of X. This problem is related to two well-known conjectures formulated by Cerny and Restivo, respectively. In particular, if Restivo's conjecture is true, our main result provides a quadratic bound for the minimal length of a s…
