Bisimilarity in fresh-register automata

Journal article

Register automata are a basic model of computation over infinite alphabets. Fresh-register automata extend register automata with the capability to generate fresh symbols in order to model computational scenarios involving name creation. This paper investigates the complexity of the bisimilarity problem for classes of register and freshregister automata. We examine all main disciplines that have appeared in the literature: general register assignments; assignments where duplicate register values are disallowed; and assignments without duplicates in which registers cannot be empty. In the general case, we show that the problem is EXPTIME-complete.

However, the absence of duplicate values in registers enables us to identify inherent symmetries inside the associated bisimulation relations, which can be used to establish a polynomial bound on the depth of Attacker-winning strategies. Furthermore, they enable a highly succinct representation of the corresponding bisimulations. By exploiting results from group theory and computational group theory, we can then show membership in PSPACE and NP respectively for the latter two register disciplines. In each case, we find that freshness does not affect the complexity class of the problem.

The results allow us to close a complexity gap for language equivalence of deterministic register automata. We show that deterministic language inequivalence for the no-duplicates fragment is NP-complete, which disproves an old conjecture of Sakamoto.

Finally, we discover that, unlike in the finite-alphabet case, the addition of pushdown store makes bisimilarity undecidable, even in the case of visibly pushdown storage.

Authors: Murawski, AS; Ramsay, SJ; Tzevelekos, N

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Episciences.org
• Journal: Logical Methods in Computer Science
• Volume: 21
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 13.1-13.59
• Publication date: 2025-02-06
• Acceptance date: 2025-01-07
• DOI: 10.46298/lmcs-21(1:13)2025
• ISSN: 1860-5974
• Language: English
• Keywords: register automata; bisimilarity; computational group theory; automata over infinite alphabets