Representing Regular Languages of Infinite Words Using Mod 2 Multiplicity Automata

Dana Angluin, Timos Antonopoulos, Dana Fisman, Nevin George

Abstract: We explore the suitability of mod 2 multiplicity automata (M2MAs) as a representation for regular languages of infinite words. M2MAs are a deterministic representation that is known to be learnable in polynomial time with membership and equivalence queries, in contrast to many other representations. Another advantage of M2MAs compared to non-deterministic automata is that their equivalence can be decided in polynomial time and complementation incurs only an additive constant size increase. Because learning time is parameterized by the size of the representation, particular attention is focused on the relative succinctness of alternate representations, in particular, LTL formulas and Büchi automata of the types: deterministic, non-deterministic and strongly unambiguous. We supplement the theoretical results of worst case upper and lower bounds with experimental results computed for randomly generated automata and specific families of LTL formulas.