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Nathan Lhote

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9 papers
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9

MFCS Conference 2025 Conference Paper

Lexicographic Transductions of Finite Words

  • Emmanuel Filiot
  • Nathan Lhote
  • Pierre-Alain Reynier

Regular transductions over finite words have linear input-to-output growth. This class of transductions enjoys many characterizations, such as transductions computable by two-way transducers as well as transductions definable in MSO (in the sense of Courcelle). Recently, regular transductions have been extended by Bojańczyk to polyregular transductions, which have polynomial growth, and are characterized by pebble transducers and MSO interpretations. Another class of interest is that of transductions defined by streaming string transducers or marble transducers, which have exponential growth and are incomparable with polyregular transductions. In this paper, we consider MSO set interpretations (MSOSI) over finite words, that were introduced by Colcombet and Loeding. MSOSI are a natural candidate for the class of "regular transductions with exponential growth", and are rather well behaved. However, MSOSI for now lacks two desirable properties that regular and polyregular transductions have. The first property is to have an automata description. This property is closely related to a second property, that of being regularity preserving, meaning preserving regular languages under inverse image. We first show that if MSOSI are (effectively) regularity preserving then any automatic ω-word has a decidable MSO theory, an almost 20 years old conjecture of Bárány. Our main contribution is the introduction of a class of transductions of exponential growth, which we call lexicographic transductions. We provide three different presentations for this class: first, as the closure of simple transductions (recognizable transductions) under a single operator called maplex; second, as a syntactic fragment of MSOSI (but the regular languages are given by automata instead of formulas); and third, we give an automaton based model called nested marble transducers, which generalize both marble transducers and pebble transducers. We show that this class enjoys many nice properties including being regularity preserving.

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MFCS Conference 2024 Conference Paper

Minimizing Cost Register Automata over a Field

  • Yahia Idriss Benalioua
  • Nathan Lhote
  • Pierre-Alain Reynier

Weighted automata (WA) are an extension of finite automata that define functions from words to values in a given semiring. An alternative deterministic model, called Cost Register Automata (CRA), was introduced by Alur et al. It enriches deterministic finite automata with a finite number of registers, which store values, updated at each transition using the operations of the semiring. It is known that CRA with register updates defined by linear maps have the same expressiveness as WA. Previous works have studied the register minimization problem: given a function computable by a WA and an integer k, is it possible to realize it using a CRA with at most k registers? In this paper, we solve this problem for CRA over a field with linear register updates, using the notion of linear hull, an algebraic invariant of WA introduced recently by Bell and Smertnig. We then generalise the approach to solve a more challenging problem, that consists in minimizing simultaneously the number of states and that of registers. In addition, we also lift our results to the setting of CRA with affine updates. Last, while the linear hull was recently shown to be computable by Bell and Smertnig, no complexity bounds were given. To fill this gap, we provide two new algorithms to compute invariants of WA. This allows us to show that the register (resp. state-register) minimization problem can be solved in 2-ExpTime (resp. in NExpTime).

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I&C Journal 2022 Journal Article

A robust class of linear recurrence sequences

  • Corentin Barloy
  • Nathanaël Fijalkow
  • Nathan Lhote
  • Filip Mazowiecki

We introduce a subclass of linear recurrence sequences which we call poly-rational sequences because they are denoted by rational expressions closed under sum and product. We show that this class is robust by giving several characterisations: polynomially ambiguous weighted automata, copyless cost-register automata, rational formal series, and linear recurrence sequences whose eigenvalues are roots of rational numbers.

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CSL Conference 2022 Conference Paper

Weighted Automata and Expressions over Pre-Rational Monoids

  • Nicolas Baudru
  • Louis-Marie Dando
  • Nathan Lhote
  • Benjamin Monmege
  • Pierre-Alain Reynier
  • Jean-Marc Talbot

The Kleene theorem establishes a fundamental link between automata and expressions over the free monoid. Numerous generalisations of this result exist in the literature; on one hand, lifting this result to a weighted setting has been widely studied. On the other hand, beyond the free monoid, different monoids can be considered: for instance, two-way automata, and even tree-walking automata, can be described by expressions using the free inverse monoid. In the present work, we aim at combining both research directions and consider weighted extensions of automata and expressions over a class of monoids that we call pre-rational, generalising both the free inverse monoid and graded monoids. The presence of idempotent elements in these pre-rational monoids leads in the weighted setting to consider infinite sums. To handle such sums, we will have to restrict ourselves to rationally additive semirings. Our main result is thus a generalisation of the Kleene theorem for pre-rational monoids and rationally additive semirings. As a corollary, we obtain a class of expressions equivalent to weighted two-way automata, as well as one for tree-walking automata.

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CSL Conference 2020 Conference Paper

A Robust Class of Linear Recurrence Sequences

  • Corentin Barloy
  • Nathanaël Fijalkow
  • Nathan Lhote
  • Filip Mazowiecki

We introduce a subclass of linear recurrence sequences which we call poly-rational sequences because they are denoted by rational expressions closed under sum and product. We show that this class is robust by giving several characterisations: polynomially ambiguous weighted automata, copyless cost-register automata, rational formal series, and linear recurrence sequences whose eigenvalues are roots of rational numbers.

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MFCS Conference 2019 Conference Paper

Uniformisation Gives the Full Strength of Regular Languages

  • Nathan Lhote
  • Vincent Michielini
  • Michal Skrzypczak

Given R a binary relation between words (which we treat as a language over a product alphabet AxB), a uniformisation of it is another relation L included in R which chooses a single word over B, for each word over A whenever there exists one. It is known that MSO, the full class of regular languages, is strong enough to define a uniformisation for each of its relations. The quest of this work is to see which other formalisms, weaker than MSO, also have this property. In this paper, we solve this problem for pseudo-varieties of semigroups: we show that no nonempty pseudo-variety weaker than MSO can provide uniformisations for its relations.

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Highlights Conference 2018 Conference Abstract

Observation synthesis for games with imperfect information

  • Nathan Lhote

ABSTRACT. We consider games over a finite arena with set of vertices V. A history is a word over V, and the information of a player is an equivalence relation over histories. Given such an equivalence relation over histories, we want to synthesize an observation function V*->O*, which maps equivalent histories to identical observations and non-equivalent histories to different observations. Given a sequential observation function, we are able to define a new arena V' with an equivalence relation ~ over V' such that two histories are equivalent iff they are letter-to-letter equivalent under ~. We show that the observation synthesis problem is decidable when the target function is letter-to-letter, and in that case we can effectively synthesize an observation function. We also show that the problem is undecidable in a slightly more general case. Joint work with Paulin Fournier and Bruno Guillon

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Highlights Conference 2015 Conference Abstract

Towards an algebraic characterization of rational word functions

  • Nathan Lhote

In formal language theory, several different models characterize regular languages, such as finite automata, congruences of finite index, or monadic second-order logic (MSO). Moreover, several fragments of MSO have effective characterizations based on algebraic properties. When we consider transducers instead of automata, such characterizations are much more challenging, because many of the properties of regular languages do not generalize to regular word functions. In this paper we consider word functions that are definable by one-way transducers (rational functions). We show that the canonical bimachine of Reutenauer and Schützenberger preserves certain algebraic properties of rational functions, similar to the case of word languages. In particular, we give an effective characterization of functions that can be defined by an aperiodic one-way transducer.

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