Complementing Two-Way Finite Automata

We study the relationship between the sizes of two-way finite automata accepting a language and its complement. In the deterministic case, for a given automaton (2dfa) with n states, we build an automaton accepting the complement with at most 4n states, independently of the size of the input alphabet. Actually, we show a stronger result, by presenting an equivalent 4n-state 2dfa that always halts. For the nondeterministic case, using a variant of inductive counting, we show that the complement of a unary language, accepted by an n-state two-way automaton (2nfa), can be accepted by an O(n8)-state 2nfa. Here we also make 2nfa’s halting. This allows the simulation of unary 2nfa’s by probabilistic Las Vegas two-way automata with O(n8) states. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.