This note revisits the equivalence of languages recognized by measure many one way quantum finite automata with non/strict cutpoint. The main contributions are as follows:
\begin{enumerate}[(1)]
\item {We provide an additional proof of the undecidability of non/strict emptiness of measure many one way quantum finite automata;}
\item {By the undecidability of non/strict emptiness of measure many one way quantum finite automata, we show that the equivalence of languages recognized by measure many one way quantum finite automata with non/strict cutpoint is undecidable, implying the undecidability of containment problem of measure many one way quantum finite automata} \end{enumerate}
In this paper, we study some decision problems both for {\it multi-letter quantum finite automata} and {\it measure many multi-letter quantum finite automata}. We first show that given a
k1-letter quantum finite automaton
A1 and a
k2-letter quantum finite automaton
A2 over the same input alphabet
Σ, they are equivalent if and only if they are
(n12+n22−1)∣Σ∣k−1+k-equivalent where
ni,
i=1,2, are the number of states in
Ai respectively, and
k=max{k1,k2}. By applying a method, due to the author, used to deal with the equivalence problem of {\it measure many one-way quantum finite automata}, we also show that a
k1-letter measure many quantum finite automaton
A1 and a
k2-letter measure many quantum finite automaton
A2 are equivalent if and only if they are
(n12+n22−1)∣Σ∣k−1+k-equivalent where
ni,
i=1,2, are the number of states in
Ai respectively, and
k=max{k1,k2}.
Next, we study the emptiness problem of those two kinds of quantum finite automata. We show that whether the language recognized by a
k-letter quantum finite automaton with non-strict cut-point is empty is undecidable, but we leave open the emptiness of language reorganized by a
k-letter quantum finite automaton with strict cutpoint. We also show that whether the languages recognized by a
k-letter measure many quantum finite automaton with both nonstrict and strict cutpoints are undecidable. And the direct consequences of the above outcomes are summarized in the paper.
We first show that given a
k1-letter quantum finite automata
A1 and a
k2-letter quantum finite automata
A2 over the same input alphabet
Σ, they are equivalent if and only if they are
(n12+n22−1)∣Σ∣k−1+k-equivalent where
n1,
i=1,2, are the numbers of state in
Ai respectively, and
k=max{k1,k2}. By applying a method, due to the author, used to deal with the equivalence problem of {\it measure many one-way quantum finite automata}, we also show that a
k1-letter measure many quantum finite automaton
A1 and a
k2-letter measure many quantum finite automaton
A2 are equivalent if and only if they are
(n12+n22−1)∣Σ∣k−1+k-equivalent where
ni,
i=1,2, are the numbers of state in
Ai respectively, and
k=max{k1,k2}. Next, we study the language equivalence problem of those two kinds of quantum finite automata. We show that for
k-letter quantum finite automata, the non-strict cut-point language equivalence problem is undecidable, i.e., it is undecidable whether
L≥λ(A1)=L≥λ(A2) where
0<λ≤1 and
Ai are
ki-letter quantum finite automata. Further, we show that both strict and non-strict cut-point language equivalence problem for
k-letter measure many quantum finite automata are undecidable. The direct consequences of the above outcomes are summarized in the paper. Finally, we comment on existing proofs about the minimization problem of one way quantum finite automata not only because we have been showing great interest in this kind of problem, which is very important in classical automata theory, but also due to that the problem itself, personally, is a challenge. This problem actually remains open.
Quantum Finite Automata with Classical states (QFACs) are nondeterministic finite automata over a finite alphabet of quantum operations. We study expressiveness of this model on finite words and the corresponding emptiness problem. We show that regular languages are incomparable with those definable by Quantum Finite Automata (QFAs) and that both are strictly subsumed by QFAC-definable languages. We show that the emptiness problem for a QFAC can be reduced to the emptiness of the language intersection of a QFA and a finite automaton. This intersection is known to be decidable for strict thresholds but undecidable for non-strict cases. Furthermore, we consider the problem for flat QFACs, a restriction where the underlying automata contain no nested loops, and relate it to the higher-dimensional orbit problem, a long-standing open challenge in dynamical systems. Finally, we propose a sound and semi-complete witness searching procedure to verify the non-emptiness of one-loop QFACs, which are sufficiently expressive to represent some prominent quantum algorithms, such as Grover's search and quantum random walks.
We show that there are quantum devices that accept all regular languages and that are exponentially more concise than deterministic finite automata (DFA). For this purpose, we introduce a new computing model of {\it one-way quantum finite automata} (1QFA), namely, {\it one-way quantum finite automata together with classical states} (1QFAC), which extends naturally both measure-only 1QFA and DFA and whose state complexity is upper-bounded by both. The original contributions of the paper are the following. First, we show that the set of languages accepted by 1QFAC with bounded error consists precisely of all regular languages. Second, we prove that 1QFAC are at most exponentially more concise than DFA. Third, we show that the previous bound is tight for families of regular languages that are not recognized by measure-once (RMO), measure-many (RMM) and multi-letter 1QFA. % More concretely we exhibit regular languages
L0(m) for
m prime such that: (i)
L0(m) cannot be recognized by measure-once, measure-many and multi-letter 1QFA; (ii) the minimal DFA that accepts
L0(m) has
O(m) states; (iii) there is a 1QFAC with constant classical states and
O(log(m)) quantum basis that accepts
L0(m). Fourth, we give a polynomial-time algorithm for determining whether any two 1QFAC are equivalent. Finally, we show that state minimization of 1QFAC is decidable within EXPSPACE. We conclude the paper by posing some open problems.