Finite Automata Formal Logic And Circuit Complexity

The study of the connections between mathematical automata and for mal logic is as old as theoretical computer science itself. In the founding paper of the subject, published in 1936, Turing showed how to describe the behavior of a universal computing machine with a formula of first order predicate logic, and thereby concluded that there is no algorithm for deciding the validity of sentences in this logic. Research on the log ical aspects of the theory of finite-state automata, which is the subject of this book, began in the early 1960's with the work of J. Richard Biichi on monadic second-order logic. Biichi's investigations were extended in several directions. One of these, explored by McNaughton and Papert in their 1971 monograph Counter-free Automata, was the characterization of automata that admit first-order behavioral descriptions, in terms of the semigroup theoretic approach to automata that had recently been developed in the work of Krohn and Rhodes and of Schiitzenberger. In the more than twenty years that have passed since the appearance of McNaughton and Papert's book, the underlying semigroup theory has grown enor mously, permitting a considerable extension of their results. During the same period, however, fundamental investigations in the theory of finite automata by and large fell out of fashion in the theoretical com puter science community, which moved to other concerns.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Workshop of Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems 2011, held in Limburg, Germany, in July 2011. The 21 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The topics covered are automata, grammars, languages and related systems, various measures and modes of operations (e.g., determinism and nondeterminism); trade-offs between computational models and/or operations; succinctness of description of (finite) objects; state explosion-like phenomena; circuit complexity of Boolean functions and related measures; resource-bounded or structure-bounded environments; frontiers between decidability and undecidability; universality and reversibility; structural complexity; formal systems for applications (e.g., software reliability, software and hardware testing, modeling of natural languages); nature-motivated (bio-inspired) architectures and unconventional models of computing; Kolmogorov complexity.

An advanced textbook giving a broad, modern view of the computational complexity theory of boolean circuits, with extensive references, for theoretical computer scientists and mathematicians.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems, DCFS 2014, held in Turku, Finland, in August 2014. The 27 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 35 submissions. The conference dealt with the following topics: Automata, grammars, languages and other formal systems; various modes of operation and complexity measures; trade-offs between computational models and modes of operation; succinctness of description of objects, state explosion-like phenomena; circuit complexity of Boolean functions and related measures; resource-bounded or structure-bounded environments; frontiers between decidability and undecidability; universality and reversibility; structural complexity; formal systems for applications (e.g., software reliability, software and hardware testing, modeling of natural languages); nature-motivated (bio-inspired) architectures and unconventional models of computing; complexity aspects of combinatorics on words; Kolmogorov complexity.

From the Preface: We hope that this small volume will suggest directions of synergy and contact for future researchers to build upon, creating connections and making discoveries that will help explain some of the many mysteries of computation. Finite model theory can be succinctly described as the study of logics on finite structures. It is an area of research existing between mathematical logic and computer science. This area has been developing through continuous interaction with computational complexity, database theory, and combinatorics. The volume presents articles by leading researchers who delivered talks at the "Workshop on Finite Models and Descriptive Complexity" at Princeton in January 1996 during a DIMACS sponsored Special Year on Logic and Algorithms. Each article is self-contained and provides a valuable introduction to the featured research areas connected with finite model theory. This text will also be of interest to those working in discrete mathematics and combinatorics.

The volume contains the proceedings of the 16th Spring School on Theoretical Computer Science held in Ramatuelle, France, in May 1988. It is a unique combination of research level articles on various aspects of the theory of finite automata and its applications. Advances made in the last five years on the mathematical foundations form the first part of the book. The second part is devoted to the important problems of the theory including star-height, concatenation hierarchies, and connections with logic and word problems. The last part presents a large variety of possible applications: number theory, distributed systems, algorithms on strings, theory of codes, complexity of boolean circuits and others.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Workshop of Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems 2011, held in Limburg, Germany, in July 2011. The 21 revised full papers presented together with 4 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The topics covered are automata, grammars, languages and related systems, various measures and modes of operations (e.g., determinism and nondeterminism); trade-offs between computational models and/or operations; succinctness of description of (finite) objects; state explosion-like phenomena; circuit complexity of Boolean functions and related measures; resource-bounded or structure-bounded environments; frontiers between decidability and undecidability; universality and reversibility; structural complexity; formal systems for applications (e.g., software reliability, software and hardware testing, modeling of natural languages); nature-motivated (bio-inspired) architectures and unconventional models of computing; Kolmogorov complexity.

This book collects the refereed proceedings of the 6th Indian Conference on Logic and Its Applications, ICLA 2015, held in Mumbai, India, in January 2015. The volume contains 13 full revised papers along with 3 invited talks presented at the conference. The papers were selected after rigorous review, from 23 submissions. They cover topics related to pure and applied formal logic, foundations and philosophy of mathematics and the sciences, set theory, model theory, proof theory, areas of theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, systems of logic in the Indian tradition, and other disciplines which are of direct interest to mathematical and philosophical logic.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 32nd International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science, MFCS 2007, held in Ceský Krumlov, Czech Republic, August 2007. The 61 revised full papers presented together with the full papers or abstracts of five invited talks address all current aspects in theoretical computer science and its mathematical foundations.

This volume contains the papers presented at the 29th Symposium on Mat- matical Foundations of Computer Science, MFCS 2004, held in Prague, Czech Republic, August 22–27, 2004. The conference was organized by the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science (ITI) and the Department of Theoretical Com- terScienceandMathematicalLogic(KTIML)oftheFacultyofMathematicsand Physics of Charles University in Prague. It was supported in part by the Eu- pean Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). Traditionally, the MFCS symposia encourage high-quality research in all branches of theoretical computer science. Ranging in scope from automata, f- mal languages, data structures, algorithms and computational geometry to c- plexitytheory,modelsofcomputation,andapplicationsincludingcomputational biology, cryptography, security and arti?cial intelligence, the conference o?ers a unique opportunity to researchers from diverse areas to meet and present their results to a general audience. The scienti?c program of this year’s MFCS took place in the lecture halls of the recently reconstructed building of the Faculty of Mathematics and P- sics in the historical center of Prague, with the famous Prague Castle and other celebratedhistoricalmonumentsinsight.Theviewfromthewindowswasach- lengingcompetitionforthespeakersinthe?ghtfortheattentionoftheaudience. But we did not fear the result: Due to the unusually tough competition for this year’s MFCS, the admitted presentations certainly attracted considerable in- rest. The conference program (and the proceedings) consisted of 60 contributed papers selected by the Program Committee from a total of 167 submissions.