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Sylvain Schmitz

Publications and source records attributed to Sylvain Schmitz.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2025

A Note on the Parameterised Complexity of Coverability in Vector Addition Systems

We investigate the parameterised complexity of the classic coverability problem for vector addition systems (VAS): given a finite set of vectors $V \subseteq\mathbb{Z}^d$, an initial configuration $s\in\mathbb{N}^d$, and a target configuration $t\in\mathbb{N}^d$, decide whether starting from $s$, one can iteratively add vectors from $V$ to ultimately arrive at a configuration that is larger than or equal to $t$ on every coordinate, while not observing any negative value on any coordinate along the way. We consider two natural parameters for the problem: the dimension $d$ and the size of $V$, defined as the total bitsize of its encoding. We present several results charting the complexity of those two parameterisations, among which the highlight is that coverability for VAS parameterised by the dimension and with all the numbers in the input encoded in unary is complete for the class XNL under PL-reductions. We also discuss open problems in the topic, most notably the question about fixed-parameter tractability for the parameterisation by the size of $V$.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2025

Games on Graphs: From Logic and Automata to Algorithms

The objective of this book is to give a comprehensive presentation of the research field concerned with infinite duration games on graphs. Historically, these game models appeared in the study of automata and logic, and they later became important for program verification and synthesis. They have many more applications, in particular some of the models investigated in this book were introduced and studied in neighbouring research communities such as optimisation, reinforcement learning, model theory, and set theory.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2025

On the Computation of the Zariski Closure of Finitely Generated Groups of Matrices

We investigate the complexity of computing the Zariski closure of a finitely generated group of matrices. The Zariski closure was previously shown to be computable by Derksen, Jeandel, and Koiran, but the termination argument for their algorithm appears not to yield any complexity bound. In this paper we follow a different approach and obtain a bound on the degree of the polynomials that define the closure. Our bound shows that the closure can be computed in elementary time. We also obtain upper bounds on the length of chains of linear algebraic groups, where all the groups are generated over a fixed number field.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2025

On Ordinal Invariants in Well Quasi Orders and Finite Antichain Orders

We investigate the ordinal invariants height, length, and width of well quasi orders (WQO), with particular emphasis on width, an invariant of interest for the larger class of orders with finite antichain condition (FAC). We show that the width in the class of FAC orders is completely determined by the width in the class of WQOs, in the sense that if we know how to calculate the width of any WQO then we have a procedure to calculate the width of any given FAC order. We show how the width of WQO orders obtained via some classical constructions can sometimes be computed in a compositional way. In particular, this allows proving that every ordinal can be obtained as the width of some WQO poset. One of the difficult questions is to give a complete formula for the width of Cartesian products of WQOs. Even the width of the product of two ordinals is only known through a complex recursive formula. Although we have not given a complete answer to this question we have advanced the state of knowledge by considering some more complex special cases and in particular by calculating the width of certain products containing three factors. In the course of writing the paper we have discovered that some of the relevant literature was written on cross-purposes and some of the notions re-discovered several times. Therefore we also use the occasion to give a unified presentation of the known results. ERRATUM:We incorrectly claimed in Lemma 4.4(1) the formula $o(P\cdot Q)=o(P)\cdot o(Q)$ for wpos $P$ and $Q$ and incorrectly attributed it to Abraham and Bonnet. We incorrectly claimed in 4.4(2) that the formula for $h(P\cdot Q)$ was due to Abraham and Bonnet.

math.LO↗
arXiv2024

Measuring well quasi-ordered finitary powersets

The complexity of a well-quasi-order (wqo) can be measured through three ordinal invariants: the width as a measure of antichains, height as a measure of chains, and maximal order type as a measure of bad sequences. We study these ordinal invariants for the finitary powerset, i.e., the collection Pf(A) of finite subsets of a wqo A ordered with the Hoare embedding relation. We show that the invariants of Pf(A) cannot be expressed as a function of the invariants of A, and provide tight upper and lower bounds for them. We then focus on a family of well-behaved wqos, for which these invariants can be computed compositionally, using a newly defined ordinal invariant called the approximate maximal order type. This family is built from multiplicatively indecomposable ordinals, using classical operations such as disjoint unions, products, finite words, finite multisets, and the finitary powerset construction.

cs.LO↗
arXiv2024

Verifying Unboundedness via Amalgamation

Well-structured transition systems (WSTS) are an abstract family of systems that encompasses a vast landscape of infinite-state systems. By requiring a well-quasi-ordering (wqo) on the set of states, a WSTS enables generic algorithms for classic verification tasks such as coverability and termination. However, even for systems that are WSTS like vector addition systems (VAS), the framework is notoriously ill-equipped to analyse reachability (as opposed to coverability). Moreover, some important types of infinite-state systems fall out of WSTS' scope entirely, such as pushdown systems (PDS). Inspired by recent algorithmic techniques on VAS, we propose an abstract notion of systems where the set of runs is equipped with a wqo and supports amalgamation of runs. We show that it subsumes a large class of infinite-state systems, including (reachability languages of) VAS and PDS, and even all systems from the abstract framework of valence systems, except for those already known to be Turing-complete. Moreover, this abstract setting enables simple and general algorithmic solutions to unboundedness problems, which have received much attention in recent years. We present algorithms for the (i) simultaneous unboundedness problem (which implies computability of downward closures and decidability of separability by piecewise testable languages), (ii) computing priority downward closures, (iii) deciding whether a language is bounded, meaning included in $w_1^*\cdots w_k^*$ for some words $w_1,\ldots,w_k$, and (iv) effective regularity of unary languages. This leads to either drastically simpler proofs or new decidability results for a rich variety of systems.

cs.FL↗
arXiv2024

On the Length of Strongly Monotone Descending Chains over $\mathbb{N}^d$

A recent breakthrough by Künnemann, Mazowiecki, Schütze, Sinclair-Banks, and Wegrzycki (ICALP, 2023) bounds the running time for the coverability problem in $d$-dimensional vector addition systems under unary encoding to $n^{2^{O(d)}}$, improving on Rackoff's $n^{2^{O(d\lg d)}}$ upper bound (Theor. Comput. Sci., 1978), and provides conditional matching lower bounds. In this paper, we revisit Lazić and Schmitz' "ideal view" of the backward coverability algorithm (Inform. Comput., 2021) in the light of this breakthrough. We show that the controlled strongly monotone descending chains of downwards-closed sets over $\mathbb{N}^d$ that arise from the dual backward coverability algorithm of Lazić and Schmitz on $d$-dimensional unary vector addition systems also enjoy this tight $n^{2^{O(d)}}$ upper bound on their length, and that this also translates into the same bound on the running time of the backward coverability algorithm. Furthermore, our analysis takes place in a more general setting than that of Lazić and Schmitz, which allows to show the same results and improve on the 2EXPSPACE upper bound derived by Benedikt, Duff, Sharad, and Worrell (LICS, 2017) for the coverability problem in invertible affine nets.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2022

Non-Elementary Complexities for Branching VASS, MELL, and Extensions

We study the complexity of reachability problems on branching extensions of vector addition systems, which allows us to derive new non-elementary complexity bounds for fragments and variants of propositional linear logic. We show that provability in the multiplicative exponential fragment is Tower-hard already in the affine case -- and hence non-elementary. We match this lower bound for the full propositional affine linear logic, proving its Tower-completeness. We also show that provability in propositional contractive linear logic is Ackermann-complete.

cs.LO↗
arXiv2021

Fixed-Dimensional Energy Games are in Pseudo-Polynomial Time

We generalise the hyperplane separation technique (Chatterjee and Velner, 2013) from multi-dimensional mean-payoff to energy games, and achieve an algorithm for solving the latter whose running time is exponential only in the dimension, but not in the number of vertices of the game graph. This answers an open question whether energy games with arbitrary initial credit can be solved in pseudo-polynomial time for fixed dimensions 3 or larger (Chaloupka, 2013). It also improves the complexity of solving multi-dimensional energy games with given initial credit from non-elementary (Brázdil, Jančar, and Kučera, 2010) to 2EXPTIME, thus establishing their 2EXPTIME-completeness.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2019

Coverability is Undecidable in One-dimensional Pushdown Vector Addition Systems with Resets

We consider the model of pushdown vector addition systems with resets. These consist of vector addition systems that have access to a pushdown stack and have instructions to reset counters. For this model, we study the coverability problem. In the absence of resets, this problem is known to be decidable for one-dimensional pushdown vector addition systems, but decidability is open for general pushdown vector addition systems. Moreover, coverability is known to be decidable for reset vector addition systems without a pushdown stack. We show in this note that the problem is undecidable for one-dimensional pushdown vector addition systems with resets.

cs.FL↗
arXiv2019

Reachability in Vector Addition Systems is Primitive-Recursive in Fixed Dimension

The reachability problem in vector addition systems is a central question, not only for the static verification of these systems, but also for many inter-reducible decision problems occurring in various fields. The currently best known upper bound on this problem is not primitive-recursive, even when considering systems of fixed dimension. We provide significant refinements to the classical decomposition algorithm of Mayr, Kosaraju, and Lambert and to its termination proof, which yield an ACKERMANN upper bound in the general case, and primitive-recursive upper bounds in fixed dimension. While this does not match the currently best known TOWER lower bound for reachability, it is optimal for related problems.

cs.LO↗
arXiv2019

Bisimulation Equivalence of First-Order Grammars is ACKERMANN-Complete

Checking whether two pushdown automata with restricted silent actions are weakly bisimilar was shown decidable by Sénizergues (1998, 2005). We provide the first known complexity upper bound for this famous problem, in the equivalent setting of first-order grammars. This ACKERMANN upper bound is optimal, and we also show that strong bisimilarity is primitive-recursive when the number of states of the automata is fixed.

cs.LO↗
arXiv2017

Perfect Half Space Games

We introduce perfect half space games, in which the goal of Player 2 is to make the sums of encountered multi-dimensional weights diverge in a direction which is consistent with a chosen sequence of perfect half spaces (chosen dynamically by Player 2). We establish that the bounding games of Jurdziński et al. (ICALP 2015) can be reduced to perfect half space games, which in turn can be translated to the lexicographic energy games of Colcombet and Niwiński, and are positionally determined in a strong sense (Player 2 can play without knowing the current perfect half space). We finally show how perfect half space games and bounding games can be employed to solve multi-dimensional energy parity games in pseudo-polynomial time when both the numbers of energy dimensions and of priorities are fixed, regardless of whether the initial credit is given as part of the input or existentially quantified. This also yields an optimal 2-EXPTIME complexity with given initial credit, where the best known upper bound was non-elementary.

cs.GT↗
arXiv2016

Forward Analysis and Model Checking for Trace Bounded WSTS

We investigate a subclass of well-structured transition systems (WSTS), the bounded---in the sense of Ginsburg and Spanier (Trans. AMS 1964)---complete deterministic ones, which we claim provide an adequate basis for the study of forward analyses as developed by Finkel and Goubault-Larrecq (Logic. Meth. Comput. Sci. 2012). Indeed, we prove that, unlike other conditions considered previously for the termination of forward analysis, boundedness is decidable. Boundedness turns out to be a valuable restriction for WSTS verification, as we show that it further allows to decide all $ω$-regular properties on the set of infinite traces of the system.

cs.LO↗
arXiv2016

Complexity Hierarchies Beyond Elementary

We introduce a hierarchy of fast-growing complexity classes and show its suitability for completeness statements of many non elementary problems. This hierarchy allows the classification of many decision problems with a non-elementary complexity, which occur naturally in logic, combinatorics, formal languages, verification, etc., with complexities ranging from simple towers of exponentials to Ackermannian and beyond.

cs.CC↗
arXiv2015

Demystifying Reachability in Vector Addition Systems

More than 30 years after their inception, the decidability proofs for reachability in vector addition systems (VAS) still retain much of their mystery. These proofs rely crucially on a decomposition of runs successively refined by Mayr, Kosaraju, and Lambert, which appears rather magical, and for which no complexity upper bound is known. We first offer a justification for this decomposition technique, by showing that it computes the ideal decomposition of the set of runs, using the natural embedding relation between runs as well quasi ordering. In a second part, we apply recent results on the complexity of termination thanks to well quasi orders and well orders to obtain a cubic Ackermann upper bound for the decomposition algorithms, thus providing the first known upper bounds for general VAS reachability.

cs.LO↗
arXiv2014

The Power of Priority Channel Systems

We introduce Priority Channel Systems, a new class of channel systems where messages carry a numeric priority and where higher-priority messages can supersede lower-priority messages preceding them in the fifo communication buffers. The decidability of safety and inevitability properties is shown via the introduction of a priority embedding, a well-quasi-ordering that has not previously been used in well-structured systems. We then show how Priority Channel Systems can compute Fast-Growing functions and prove that the aforementioned verification problems are $\mathbf{F}_{\varepsilon_{0}}$-complete.

cs.LO↗