We investigate the Sandpile Model and Chip Firing Game and an extension of these models on cycle graphs. The extended model consists of allowing a negative number of chips at each vertex. We give the characterization of reachable configurations and of fixed points of each model. At the end, we give explicit formula for the number of their fixed points.

Recently, Constantinescu and Ilie proved a variant of the well-known periodicity theorem of Fine and Wilf in the case of two relatively prime abelian periods and conjectured a result for the case of two non-relatively prime abelian periods. In this paper, we answer some open problems they suggested. We show that their conjecture is false but we give bounds, that depend on the two abelian periods, such that the conjecture is true for all words having length at least those bounds and show that some of them are optimal. We also extend their study to the context of partial words, giving optimal lengths and describing an algorithm for constructing optimal words.

We provide an algorithm for listing all minimal 2-dominating sets of a tree of order n in time 𝒪(1.3248n). This implies that every tree has at most 1.3248n minimal 2-dominating sets. We also show that this bound is tight.

We prove the undecidability of Core XPath 1.0 (CXP) [G. Gottlob and C. Koch, in Proc. of 17th Ann. IEEE Symp. on Logic in Computer Science, LICS ’02 (Copenhagen, July 2002). IEEE CS Press (2002) 189–202.] extended with an Inflationary Fixed Point (IFP) operator. More specifically, we prove that the satisfiability problem of this language is undecidable. In fact, the fragment of CXP+IFP containing only the self and descendant axes is already undecidable.

We introduce a type of isomorphism among strategic games that we call local isomorphism. Local isomorphisms is a weaker version of the notions of strong and weak game isomorphism introduced in [J. Gabarro, A. Garcia and M. Serna, Theor. Comput. Sci. 412 (2011) 6675–6695]. In a local isomorphism it is required to preserve, for any player, the player’s preferences on the sets of strategy profiles that differ only in the action selected by this player. We show that the game isomorphism problem for local isomorphism is equivalent to the same problem for strong or weak isomorphism for strategic games given in: general, extensive and formula general form. As a consequence of the results in [J. Gabarro, A. Garcia and M. Serna, Theor. Comput. Sci. 412 (2011) 6675–6695] this implies that local isomorphism problem for strategic games is equivalent to (a) the circuit isomorphism problem for games given in general form, (b) the boolean formula isomorphism problem for formula games in general form, and (c) the graph isomorphism problem for games given in explicit form.

A Message Authentication Code (MAC) is a function that takes a message and a key as parameters and outputs an authentication of the message. MAC are used to guarantee the legitimacy of messages exchanged through a network, since generating a correct authentication requires the knowledge of the key defined secretly by trusted parties. However, an attacker with access to a sufficiently large number of message/authentication pairs may use a brute force algorithm to infer the secret key: from a set containing initially all possible key candidates, subsequently remove those that yield an incorrect authentication, proceeding this way for each intercepted message/authentication pair until a single key remains. In this paper, we determine an exact formula for the expected number of message/authentication pairs that must be used before such form of attack is successful, along with an asymptotical bound that is both simple and tight. We conclude by illustrating a modern application where this bound comes in handy, namely the estimation of security levels in reflection-based verification of software integrity.

We describe a sequent calculus μLJ with primitives for inductive and coinductive datatypes and equip it with reduction rules allowing a sound translation of Gödel’s system T. We introduce the notion of a μ-closed category, relying on a uniform interpretation of open μLJ formulas as strong functors. We show that any μ-closed category is a sound model for μLJ. We then turn to the construction of a concrete μ-closed category based on Hyland-Ong game semantics. The model relies on three main ingredients: the construction of a general class of strong functors called open functors acting on the category of games and strategies, the solution of recursive arena equations by exploiting cycles in arenas, and the adaptation of the winning conditions of parity games to build initial algebras and terminal coalgebras for many open functors. We also prove a weak completeness result for this model, yielding a normalisation proof for μLJ.

We discuss how much space is sufficient to decide whether a unary given number n is a prime. We show that O(log log n) space is sufficient for a deterministic Turing machine, if it is equipped with an additional pebble movable along the input tape, and also for an alternating machine, if the space restriction applies only to its accepting computation subtrees. In other words, the language is a prime is in pebble–DSPACE(log log n) and also in accept–ASPACE(log log n). Moreover, if the given n is composite, such machines are able to find a divisor of n. Since O(log log n) space is too small to write down a divisor, which might require Ω(log n) bits, the witness divisor is indicated by the input head position at the moment when the machine halts.

The cutwidth is an important graph-invariant in circuit layout designs. The cutwidth of a graph G is the minimum value of the maximum number of overlap edges when G is embedded into a line. A caterpillar is a tree which yields a path when all its leaves are removed. An iterated caterpillar is a tree which yields a caterpillar when all its leaves are removed. In this paper we present an exact formula for the cutwidth of the iterated caterpillars.

A standard bridge between automata theory and logic is provided by the notion of characteristic formula. This paper investigates this problem for the class of event-recording automata (ERA), a subclass of timed automata in which clocks are associated with actions and that enjoys very good closure properties. We first study the problem of expressing characteristic formulae for ERA in Event-Recording Logic (ERL ), a logic introduced by Sorea to express event-based timed specifications. We prove that the construction proposed by Sorea for ERA without invariants is incorrect. More generally, we prove that timed bisimilarity cannot in general be expressed in ERL for the class of ERA , and study under which conditions on ERA it can be. Then, we introduce the logic WTμ , a new logic for event-based timed specifications closer to the timed logic ℒν that was introduced by Laroussinie, Larsen and Weise. We prove that it is strictly more expressive than ERL , and that its model-checking problem against ERA is EXPTIME -complete. Finally, we provide characteristic formulae constructions in WTμ for characterizing the general class of ERA up to timed (bi)similarity and study the complexity issues.

We give several new applications of the wreath product of forest algebras to the study of logics on trees. These include new simplified proofs of necessary conditions for definability in CTL and first-order logic with the ancestor relation; a sequence of identities satisfied by all forest languages definable in PDL; and new examples of languages outside CTL, along with an application to the question of what properties are definable in both CTL and LTL.

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is one of the most fundamental optimization problems. We consider the β-metric traveling salesman problem (Δβ-TSP), i.e., the TSP restricted to graphs satisfying the β-triangle inequality c({v,w}) ≤ β(c({v,u}) + c({u,w})), for some cost function c and any three vertices u,v,w. The well-known path matching Christofides algorithm (PMCA) guarantees an approximation ratio of 3β2/2 and is the best known algorithm for the Δβ-TSP, for 1 ≤ β ≤ 2. We provide a complete analysis of the algorithm. First, we correct an error in the original implementation that may produce an invalid solution. Using a worst-case example, we then show that the algorithm cannot guarantee a better approximation ratio. The example can also be used for the PMCA variants for the Hamiltonian path problem with zero and one prespecified endpoints. For two prespecified endpoints, we cannot reuse the example, but we construct another worst-case example to show the optimality of the analysis also in this case.

We consider μ-calculus formulas in a normal form: after a prefix of fixed-point quantifiers follows a quantifier-free expression. We are interested in the problem of evaluating (model checking) such formulas in a powerset lattice. We assume that the quantifier-free part of the expression can be any monotone function given by a black-box – we may only ask for its value for given arguments. As a first result we prove that when the lattice is fixed, the problem becomes polynomial (the assumption about the quantifier-free part strengthens this result). As a second result we show that any algorithm solving the problem has to ask at least about n2 (namely Ω(n2/log n)) queries to the function, even when the expression consists of one μ and one ν (the assumption about the quantifier-free part weakens this result).

Most of the constructions of infinite words having polynomial subword complexity are quite complicated, e.g., sequences of Toeplitz, sequences defined by billiards in the cube, etc. In this paper, we describe a simple method for constructing infinite words w over a binary alphabet  { a,b }  with polynomial subword complexity pw. Assuming w contains an infinite number of a’s, our method is based on the gap function which gives the distances between consecutive b’s. It is known that if the gap function is injective, we can obtain at most quadratic subword complexity, and if the gap function is blockwise injective, we can obtain at most cubic subword complexity. Here, we construct infinite binary words w such that pw(n) = Θ(nβ) for any real number β > 1.

In this paper we prove the decidability of the HD0L ultimate periodicity problem.

We study iteration and recursion operators in the denotational semantics of typed λ-calculi derived from the multiset relational model of linear logic. Although these operators are defined as fixpoints of typed functionals, we prove them finitary in the sense of Ehrhard’s finiteness spaces.