Multihead Finite-State Compression

Neil Lutz

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arXiv · 2510.17544

Multihead Finite-State Compression

Neil Lutz

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Abstract

This paper develops multihead finite-state compression, a generalization of finite-state compression, complementary to the multihead finite-state dimensions of Huang, Li, Lutz, and Lutz (2025). In this model, an infinite sequence of symbols is compressed by a compressor that produces outputs according to finite-state rules, based on the symbols read by a constant number of finite-state read heads moving forward obliviously through the sequence. The main theorem of this work establishes that for every sequence and every positive integer $h$, the infimum of the compression ratios achieved by $h$-head finite-state information-lossless compressors equals the $h$-head finite-state predimension of the sequence. As an immediate corollary, the infimum of these ratios over all $h$ is the multihead finite-state dimension of the sequence.

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Neil Lutz. 2025-10-20. Multihead Finite-State Compression. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.17544

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