Constrained Synchronization for Commutative Automata and Automata with Simple Idempotents

09/06/2021

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by   Stefan Hoffmann, et al.

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For general input automata, there exist regular constraint languages such that asking if a given input automaton admits a synchronizing word in the constraint language is PSPACE-complete or NP-complete. Here, we investigate this problem for commutative automata over an arbitrary alphabet and automata with simple idempotents over a binary alphabet as input automata. The latter class contains, for example, the Černý family of automata. We find that for commutative input automata, the problem is always solvable in polynomial time, for every constraint language. For input automata with simple idempotents over a binary alphabet and with a constraint language given by a partial automaton with up to three states, the constrained synchronization problem is also solvable in polynomial time.