ABSTRACT. We are motivated by the following question: which nominal languages admit an active learning algorithm? This question was left open in previous work, and is particularly challenging for languages recognised by nondeterministic automata. To answer it, we develop the theory of \emph{residual nominal automata}, a subclass of nondeterministic nominal automata. We prove that this class has canonical representatives, which can always be constructed via a finite number of observations. This property enables active learning algorithms, and makes up for the fact that residuality -- a semantic property -- is undecidable for nominal automata. Our construction for canonical residual automata is based on a machine-independent characterisation of residual languages, for which we develop new results in nominal lattice theory. Studying residuality in the context of nominal languages is a step towards a better understanding of learnability of automata with some sort of nondeterminism.

ABSTRACT. Regular functions from infinite words to infinite words can be equivalently specified by MSO-transducers, streaming omega-string transducers as well as deterministic two-way transducers with look-ahead. In their one-way restriction, the latter transducers define the class of rational functions. Even though regular functions are robustly characterised by several finite-state devices, even the subclass of rational functions may contain functions which are not computable ((by a Turing machine with infinite input). This paper proposes a decision procedure for the following synthesis problem: given a regular function f (equivalently specified by one of the aforementioned transducer model), is f computable and if it is, synthesize a Turing machine computing it.

For regular functions, we show that computability is equivalent to continuity, and therefore the problem boils down to deciding continuity. We establish a generic characterisation of continuity for functions preserving regular languages under inverse image (such as regular functions). We exploit this characterisation to show the decidability of continuity (and hence computability) of rational and regular functions. For rational functions, we show that this can be done in NLogSpace (it was already known to be in PTime by Prieur). In a similar fashion, we also effectively characterise uniform continuity of regular functions, and relate it to the notion of uniform computability, which offers stronger efficiency guarantees.

ABSTRACT. The deterministic membership problem for timed automata asks whether the timed language recognized by a nondeterministic timed automaton can be recognized by a deterministic timed automaton. We show that the problem is decidable when the input automaton is a one-clock nondeterministic timed automaton without epsilon transitions and the number of clocks of the deterministic timed automaton is fixed. We show that the problem in all the other cases is undecidable, i.e., when either 1) the input nondeterministic timed automaton has two clocks or more, or 2) it uses epsilon transitions, or 3) the number of clocks of the output deterministic automaton is not fixed.

ABSTRACT. We study the language universality problem for One-Counter Nets, also known as 1-dimensional Vector Addition Systems with States (1-VASS), parameterized either with an initial counter value, or with an upper bound on the allowed counter value during runs. The language accepted by a OCN (defined by visiting a final control state) is monotone in both parameters. This yields two natural questions: 1) does there exist an initial counter value that makes the language universal? 2) does there exist a sufficiently high ceiling so that the bounded language is universal?

Despite the fact that unparameterized universality is Ackermann-complete and that these problems seem to reduce to checking basic structural properties of the underlying automaton we show that in fact both problems are undecidable. We also report on the complexities for several decidable subclasses, namely for unambiguous systems and for those over a single-letter alphabet.

ABSTRACT. We study networks of processes which all execute the same finite-state protocol and communicate thanks to a rendez-vous mechanism. Given a protocol, we are interested in checking whether there exists a number, called a cut-off, such that in any networks with a bigger number of participants, there is an execution where all the entities end in some final states. We provide decidability and complexity results of this problem under various assumptions, such as absence/presence of a leader or symmetric/asymmetric rendez-vous.

ABSTRACT. In a previous paper we introduced immediate observation (IO) Petri nets, a class of interest in the study of population protocols and enzymatic chemical networks. In the first part of this paper we show that IO nets are globally flat, and so their safety properties can be checked by efficient symbolic model checking tools using acceleration techniques, like FAST. In the second part we study Branching IO nets (BIO nets), whose transitions can create tokens. BIO nets extend both IO nets and communication-free nets, also called BPP nets, a widely studied class. We show that, while BIO nets are no longer globally flat, and their sets of reachable markings may be non-semilinear, they still are locally flat. As a consequence, the reachability problem for BIO nets, and even a certain parameterized version of it, is in PSPACE. This makes BIO nets the first natural net class with non-semilinear reachability relations for which the reachability problem is provably simpler than for general Petri nets.

ABSTRACT. Information security properties of reactive systems like non-interference often require relating different executions of the system to each other and following them simultaneously. Such hyperproperties can also be useful in other contexts, e.g., when analysing properties of distributed systems like linearizability. Since common logics like LTL, CTL, or the modal mu-calculus cannot express hyperproperties, the hyperlogics HyperLTL and HyperCTL* were developed to cure this defect. However, these logics are not able to express arbitrary omega-regular properties. In this paper, we introduce HyperPDL-Delta, an adaptation of the Propositional Dynamic Logic of Fischer and Ladner for hyperproperties, in order to remove this limitation. Using an elegant automata-theoretic framework, we show that HyperPDL-Delta model checking is asymptotically not more expensive than HyperCTL* model checking, despite its vastly increased expressive power. We further investigate fragments of HyperPDL-Delta with regard to satisfiability checking.

ABSTRACT. The undecidability of basic decision problems for general FIFO machines such as reachability and unboundedness is well-known. In this paper, we provide an underapproximation for the general model by considering only runs which are input-bounded (i.e. the sequence of messages sent through a particular channel belongs to a bounded language). We prove, by reducing this model to a counter machine with bounded zero tests, that the general reachability problem (and by extension, rational reachability, unboundedness, deadlock, etc.) is decidable. This class of machines subsumes input-letter-bounded machines, flat machines, linear FIFO nets and monogeneous machines, for which some of these problems were already shown to be decidable. These theoretical results can form the foundations to build a tool to verify general FIFO machines based on the analysis of input-bounded machines.

ABSTRACT. The reachability problem is a central decision problem for formal verification based on vector addition systems with states (VASS), which are equivalent to Petri nets and form one of the most studied and applied models of concurrency. Reachability for VASS is also inter-reducible with a plethora of problems from a number of areas of computer science. In spite of recent progress, the complexity of the reachability problem remains unsettled, and it is closely related to the lengths of shortest VASS runs that witness reachability.

We consider VASS of fixed dimension, and obtain three main results. For the first two, we assume that the integers in the input are given in unary, and that the control graph of the given VASS is flat (i.e., without nested cycles). We obtain a family of VASS in dimension 3 whose shortest reachability witnessing runs are exponential, and we show that the reachability problem is NP-hard in dimension 7. These results resolve negatively questions that had been posed by the works of Blondin et al. in LICS 2015 and Englert et al. in LICS 2016, and contribute a first construction that distinguishes 3-dimensional flat VASS from 2-dimensional VASS.

Our third result, by means of a novel family of products of integer fractions, shows that 4-dimensional VASS can have doubly exponentially long shortest reachability witnessing runs. The smallest dimension for which this was previously known is 14.

ABSTRACT. Game theory is the study of the strategic behavior of rational decision makers who are aware that their decisions affect one another. Its simple but universal principles have found applications in the most diverse disciplines, including economics, social sciences, evolutionary biology, as well as logic, system science and computer science. Despite its long-standing tradition and its many advances, game theory is still a young and developing science. In this paper, we describe some recent and exciting applications in the fields of machine learning and privacy.