Quantum, stochastic, and pseudo stochastic languages with few states

Abstract

Stochastic languages are the languages recognized by probabilistic finite automata (PFAs) with cutpoint over the field of real numbers. More general computational models over the same field such as generalized finite automata (GFAs) and quantum finite automata (QFAs) define the same class. In 1963, Rabin proved the set of stochastic languages to be uncountable presenting a single 2-state PFA over the binary alphabet recognizing uncountably many languages depending on the cutpoint. In this paper, we show the same result for unary stochastic languages. Namely, we exhibit a 2-state unary GFA, a 2-state unary QFA, and a family of 4-state unary PFAs recognizing uncountably many languages. After this, we completely characterize the class of languages recognized by 1-state GFAs, which is the only nontrivial class of languages recognized by 1-state automata. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.