Explorable Automata

We define the class of explorable automata on finite or infinite words. This is a generalization of History-Deterministic (HD) automata, where this time non-deterministic choices can be resolved by building finitely many simultaneous runs instead of just one. We show that recognizing HD parity automata of fixed index among explorable ones is in PTIME, thereby giving a strong link between the two notions. We then show that recognizing explorable automata is EXPTIME-complete, in the case of finite words or parity automata up to index [0, 2]. Additionally, we define the notion of $\omega$-explorable automata on infinite words, where countably many runs can be used to resolve the non-deterministic choices. We show EXPTIME-completeness for $\omega$-explorability of automata on infinite words for the safety and co-B\"uchi acceptance conditions. We finally characterize the expressivity of ($\omega$-)explorable automata with respect to the parity index hierarchy. We leave open the decidability of explorability for $[1, 3]$-automata and $\omega$-explorability for Büchi automata, both equivalent to the general case of arbitrary acceptance conditions.

Authors

• Denis Kuperberg

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