Laure Daviaud ; David Purser ; Marie Tcheng - The Big-O Problem for Max-Plus Automata is Decidable (PSPACE-Complete)

lmcs:13539 - Logical Methods in Computer Science, July 15, 2025, Volume 21, Issue 3 - https://doi.org/10.46298/lmcs-21(3:3)2025
The Big-O Problem for Max-Plus Automata is Decidable (PSPACE-Complete)Article

Authors: Laure Daviaud ; David Purser ; Marie Tcheng

We show that the big-O problem for max-plus automata is decidable and PSPACE-complete. The big-O (or affine domination) problem asks whether, given two max-plus automata computing functions f and g, there exists a constant c such that f < cg+ c. This is a relaxation of the containment problem asking whether f < g, which is undecidable. Our decidability result uses Simon's forest factorisation theorem, and relies on detecting specific elements, that we call witnesses, in a finite semigroup closed under two special operations: stabilisation and flattening.


Volume: Volume 21, Issue 3
Secondary volumes: Selected Papers of the 38th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 2023)
Published on: July 15, 2025
Accepted on: April 16, 2025
Submitted on: May 3, 2024
Keywords: Formal Languages and Automata Theory, Logic in Computer Science
Funding:
    Source : OpenAIRE Graph
  • Learning, Approximating and Minimising Streaming Automata for Large-scale Optimisation; Funder: UK Research and Innovation; Code: EP/T018313/1
  • Challenging Problems in Infinite-State Systems; Funder: European Commission; Code: 950398

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