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Lower Bounds for Las Vegas Automataby Information Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2003

Mika Hirvensalo
Affiliation:
TUCS-Turku Centre for Computer Science and Department of Mathematics, University of Turku, FIN-20014 Turku, Finland; . Supported by the academy of Finland under grant 44087.
Sebastian Seibert
Affiliation:
Lehrstuhl für Informatik I, RWTH Aachen, Ahornstraße 55, 52074 Aachen, Germany; .
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Abstract

We show that the size of a Las Vegas automatonand the size of a complete, minimal deterministicautomaton accepting a regularlanguage are polynomially related. More precisely, we showthat if a regular language L is accepted by aLas Vegas automaton having r states such thatthe probability for a definite answer to occur is at least p,then r ≥ np , where n is the number of the statesof the minimal deterministic automaton accepting L.Earlier this result has been obtainedin [2] by using a reduction to one-way Las Vegas communicationprotocols, but here we give a direct proof based on information theory.

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Type
Research Article
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, 2003

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References

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