Some basic concepts and results from automata theory

Pedro V. Silva
University of Porto, Portugal
e-mail: pvsilva@fc.up.pt
September 10, 2012
In theoretical computer science, automata are models for computing devices admitting
bounded memory: the finitely many states of the automata represent the finitely many
memory configurations. However, they are also combinatorial structures and play a very
important role in geometric group theory. We present in this short text some basic concepts and results related to automata that can be useful to the mini-course Fixed points of
endomorphisms of virtually free groups to be held at the CRM.
In this context, an alphabet is a set and its elements are called letters. Usually, alphabets
are finite. If we are interested in group theory, we must pay particular attention to alphabets
e = A A1 , where A1 denotes a set of formal inverses of A.
of the form A
A finite sequence of letters is appropriately called a word. This includes the empty word,
conventionally denoted by 1. Nonempty words (on the alphabet A) are usually written in
the form a1 . . . an with a1 , . . . , an A.
The set of all words on A is denoted by A and turns out to be the free monoid on A
when it is endowed with the concatenation product, defined by
(a1 . . . an )(b1 . . . bm ) = a1 . . . an b1 . . . bm
and taking 1 as the identity element.
A subset of A is called an A-language. We remark that language theory is an important
branch of theoretical computer science which aims at classifying languages and explore
the algorithmic potential of various subclasses. The pioneering work of the linguist Noam
Chomsky in the fifties is at its origin.
We say that A = (Q, q0 , T, ) is a (finite) deterministic A-automaton if:
Q is a (finite) set;
q0 Q and T Q;
: Q A Q is a partial mapping.
We say that Q is the set of states, q0 is the initial state, T is the set of terminal states and
is the transition function.
We extend to a partial mapping Q A Q by induction through
(q, 1) = q,

(q, ua) = ((q, u), a)

1

(u A , a A).

When the automaton is clear from the context, we write qu = (q, u). We can view A as
a directed graph with states as vertices and edges labelled by letters a A by identifying
a
(p, a) = q with the edge pq. This combinatorial perspective leads naturally to the notion
of nondeterministic A-automaton, when the set of edges may be any subset of Q A Q
(i.e. may be a relation).
A finite nontrivial path in A is a sequence
a

1
2
n
p0 p
1 . . . pn

such that pi1 p

i is an edge of A for i = 1, . . . , n. Its label is the word a1 . . . an A .
It is said to be a successful path if p0 = q0 and pn T . We consider also the trivial path
1
pp for p Q, which is successful if p = q0 T .
The language L(A) recognized by A is the set of all labels of successful paths in A.
Equivalently, L(A) = {u A | q0 u T }.
For instance, the following automaton, where the central vertex is initial and all vertices
are terminal, is a deterministic automaton recognizing all the free group reduced words on
the alphabet {a, b, a1 , b1 }:

b1

"

,|
? L
??


a
??

??

??
b 
a ???

??


?? 

1
a
?
b
b
a1
??


??

?? 1

??a


??


1
??
 b
??


1
a
? 

 
,
l

<
b
b

L _?l

b1

a1

i
If pi1 p
i is an edge of A for every i N, we may consider also the infinite path

1
2
3
p0 p
1 p2 . . .

Its label is the (right) infinite word a1 a2 a3 . . . We denote by A the set of all (right) infinite
words on the alphabet A, and write also A = A A . We denote by L (A) the set of
labels of all infinite paths q0 . . . in A.
We can now introduce the class of rational A-languages, denoted by Rat A , which
admits an extraordinary number of equivalenty characterizations. We shall mention just
the following, where the star operator refers to the submonoid generated by a language:
Proposition 1 Let L A . Then the following conditions are equivalent:
(i) L = L(A) for some finite deterministic A-automaton;
(ii) L = L(A) for some finite nondeterministic A-automaton;
2

(iii) L can be obtained from finite languages using finitely many times the operators union,
product and star.
Rational languages satisfy many important closure and algorithmic properties, such as
closure under boolean operators. In the group theory context, a fundamental role is played
e , we denote
by Benois Theorem (closure under free group reduction). Given a word u A
by u the (unique) reduced word obtained by successively cancelling from u factors of the
form aa1 , a1 a (a A).
e , then also L Rat A
e .
Proposition 2 If L Rat A
The definition of rational languages through condition (iii) of Proposition 1 generalizes
to subsets of an arbitrary group in the obvious way. Moreover, if we fix a homomorphism
: A G, the rational subsets of G are the images by of the rational A-languages.
The notion of rational subset constitutes a very useful generalization to subsets of the
notion of finitely generated subgroup. Evidence is provided by the following classical result
of Anisimov and Seifert:
Proposition 3 Let H be a subgroup of a group G. Then H is a rational subset of G if and
only if H is finitely generated.
In group theory, inverse automata play an important role. An A-automaton is said to
e
be trim if every vertex lies in some successful path. A trim deterministic A-automaton
A
is said to be inverse if
a1

pq is an edge of A if and only if q p is an edge of A.

Inverse automata play a major role in the representation of finitely generated subgroups of
a free group (Stallings automata).
The concept of automaton can be given extra structure by considering an output function. We present a restricted definition, sufficient for our purposes.
Given a finite alphabet A, we say that T = (Q, q0 , , ) is a (finite) deterministic Atransducer if:
Q is a (finite) set;
q0 Q;
: Q A Q and : Q A A are mappings.
As in the automaton case, we may extend to a mapping Q A Q. Similarly, we
extend to a mapping Q A A through
(q, 1) = 1,

(q, ua) = (q, u)((q, u), a)

(u A , a A).

When the transducer is clear from the context, we write qa = (q, a). We can view T as
a directed graph with edges labelled by elements of A A (represented in the form a|w)
a|w
by identifying (p, a) = q, (p, a) = w with the edge pq. If pu = q and (p, u) = v, we
u|v
write also pq and call it a path in T .
It is immediate that, given u A , there exists exactly one path in T of the form
u|v
q0 q. We write uTb = v, defining thus a mapping Tb : A A .
3

e
Assume now that T = (Q, q0 , T, , ) is a deterministic A-transducer
such that
a1 |u1

a|u

pq is an edge of T if and only if q p is an edge of T .

Then T is said to be inverse. The next result shows that inverse transducers are appropriate
e FA
to work in the context of free groups. We denote by FA the free group on A and : A
is the canonical homomorphism.
e
Proposition 4 Let T = (Q, q0 , , ) be an inverse A-transducer.
Then:
e Q induces a mapping e : Q FA Q by (q, u)e = (q, u);
(i) : Q A
e A
e induces a partial mapping Te : FA FA by uTe = uTb .
(ii) Tb : A
The interested reader can find more information on all these topics in the following
bibliography:

References
[1] L. Bartholdi and P. V. Silva, Rational subsets of groups, Chapter 23 of the handbook
AutoMathA (to appear), arXiv:1012.1532, 2010.
[2] J. Berstel, Transductions and Context-free Languages, Teubner, Stuttgart, 1979.
[3] J. Sakarovitch, Elements de Theorie des Automates, Vuibert, Paris, 2003.
[4] P. V. Silva, Fixed points of endomorphisms of virtually free groups, preprint CMUP
2012-10, arXiv:1203.1355.