A complexity measure on Büchi automata

Abstract

We define a complexity measure on non-deterministic Büchi automata, based on the notion of the width of the skeleton tree introduced by Kähler and Wilke. We show that the induced hierarchy tightly correlates to the Wagner Hierarchy, a corner stone in the theory of regular ω-languages that is derived from a complexity measure on deterministic Muller automata. The relation between the hierarchies entails, for instance, that a nondeterministic Büchi automaton of width k can be translated to a deterministic parity automaton of degree at most 2k+1.