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Distance desert automata and the star height problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2005

Daniel Kirsten*
Affiliation:
Dresden University of Technology, Institute of Algebra, 01062 Dresden, Germany; kirsten@math.tu-dresden.de
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Abstract

We introduce the notion of nested distance desert automata as a joint generalization of distance automata and desert automata. We show that limitedness of nested distance desert automata is PSPACE-complete. As an application, we show that it is decidable in 22O(n) space whether the language accepted by an n-state non-deterministic automaton is of a star height less than a given integer h (concerning rational expressions with union, concatenation and iteration), which is the first ever complexity bound for the star height problem.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, 2005

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