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Fresh-register automata

Published:26 January 2011Publication History
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Abstract

What is a basic automata-theoretic model of computation with names and fresh-name generation? We introduce Fresh-Register Automata (FRA), a new class of automata which operate on an infinite alphabet of names and use a finite number of registers to store fresh names, and to compare incoming names with previously stored ones. These finite machines extend Kaminski and Francez's Finite-Memory Automata by being able to recognise globally fresh inputs, that is, names fresh in the whole current run. We examine the expressivity of FRA's both from the aspect of accepted languages and of bisimulation equivalence. We establish primary properties and connections between automata of this kind, and answer key decidability questions. As a demonstrating example, we express the theory of the pi-calculus in FRA's and characterise bisimulation equivalence by an appropriate, and decidable in the finitary case, notion in these automata.

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        • Published in

          cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
          ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 46, Issue 1
          POPL '11
          January 2011
          624 pages
          ISSN:0362-1340
          EISSN:1558-1160
          DOI:10.1145/1925844
          Issue’s Table of Contents
          • cover image ACM Conferences
            POPL '11: Proceedings of the 38th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
            January 2011
            652 pages
            ISBN:9781450304900
            DOI:10.1145/1926385

          Copyright © 2011 ACM

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          Association for Computing Machinery

          New York, NY, United States

          Publication History

          • Published: 26 January 2011

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