Representing Small Ordinals by Finite Automata
arXiv:1008.1650 · doi:10.4204/EPTCS.31.10
Abstract
It is known that an ordinal is the order type of the lexicographic ordering of a regular language if and only if it is less than omega^omega. We design a polynomial time algorithm that constructs, for each well-ordered regular language L with respect to the lexicographic ordering, given by a deterministic finite automaton, the Cantor Normal Form of its order type. It follows that there is a polynomial time algorithm to decide whether two deterministic finite automata accepting well-ordered regular languages accept isomorphic languages. We also give estimates on the size of the smallest automaton representing an ordinal less than omega^omega, together with an algorithm that translates each such ordinal to an automaton.
In Proceedings DCFS 2010, arXiv:1008.1270