The Černý Conjecture and 1-Contracting Automata

A deterministic finite automaton is synchronizing if there exists a word that sends all states of the automaton to the same state. Černý conjectured in 1964 that a synchronizing automaton with $n$ states has a synchronizing word of length at most $(n-1)^2$. We introduce the notion of aperiodically 1-contracting automata and prove that in these automata all subsets of the state set are reachable, so that in particular they are synchronizing. Furthermore, we give a sufficient condition under which the Černý conjecture holds for aperiodically 1-contracting automata. As a special case, we prove some results for circular automata.

Semisimple Synchronizing Automata and the Wedderburn-Artin Theory

We present a ring theoretic approach to Černý's conjecture via the Wedderburn-Artin theory. We first introduce the radical ideal of a synchronizing automaton, and then the natural notion of semisimple synchronizing automata. This is a rather broad class since it contains simple synchronizing automata like those in Černý's series. Semisimplicity gives also the advantage of “factorizing” the problem of finding a synchronizing word into the sub-problems of finding “short” words that are zeros into the projection of the simple components in the Wedderburn-Artin decomposition. In the general case this last problem is related to the search of radical words of length at most [Formula: see text] where n is the number of states of the automaton. We show that the solution of this “Radical Conjecture” would give an upper bound [Formula: see text] for the shortest reset word in a strongly connected synchronizing automaton. Finally, we use this approach to prove the Radical Conjecture in some particular cases and Černý's conjecture for the class of strongly semisimple synchronizing automata. These are automata whose sets of synchronizing words are cyclic ideals, or equivalently, ideal regular languages that are closed under taking roots.

The Cerný conjecture for automata respecting intervals of a directed graph

Automata, Logic and Semantics International audience The Cerný's conjecture states that for every synchronizing automaton with n states there exists a reset word of length not exceeding (n - 1)2. We prove this conjecture for a class of automata preserving certain properties of intervals of a directed graph. Our result unifies and generalizes some earlier results obtained by other authors.

LOWER BOUNDS FOR THE LENGTH OF RESET WORDS IN EULERIAN AUTOMATA

For each odd n ≥ 5 we present a synchronizing Eulerian automaton with n states for which the minimum length of reset words is equal to [Formula: see text]. We also discuss various connections between the reset threshold of a synchronizing automaton and a sequence of reachability properties in its underlying graph.

Synchronizing random automata

special issue dedicated to the second edition of the conference AutoMathA: from Mathematics to Applications International audience Conjecture that any synchronizing automaton with n states has a reset word of length (n - 1)(2) was made by. Cerny in 1964. Notwithstanding the numerous attempts made by various researchers this conjecture hasn't been definitively proven yet. In this paper we study a random automaton that is sampled uniformly at random from the set of all automata with n states and m(n) letters. We show that for m(n) > 18 ln n any random automaton is synchronizing with high probability. For m(n) > n(beta), beta > 1/2 we also show that any random automaton with high probability satisfies the. Cerny conjecture.