Recognizable sets with multiplicities in the tropical semiring

Abstract

The last ten years saw the emergence of some results about recognizable subsets of a free monoid with multiplicities in the Min-Plus semiring. An interesting aspect of this theoretical body is that its discovery was motivated throughout by applications such as the finite power property, Eggan’s classical star height problem and the measure of the nondeterministic complexity of finite automata. We review here these results, their applications and point out some open problems.