How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
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These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
Minimal DFAs are unique up to start-state-preserving isomorphism
Statement
If two DFAs are minimal among the DFAs recognizing the same regular language , then there is an isomorphism between them that sends the start state of one to the start state of the other.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: Minimal DFAs and recognizing the same regular language .
By Nerode classes form the canonical minimal DFA, the Nerode-class DFA is a minimal DFA for .
By Reachable states of a DFA, a state is reachable exactly when some input word leads to it from the start state.
By Removing unreachable states preserves the recognized language, deleting unreachable states preserves the recognized language.
Proof
A minimal DFA has no unreachable states. Indeed, if had an unreachable state, then [L3] would remove it without changing the language, contradicting minimality.
Let be the canonical Nerode-class DFA from [L1]. Because step 1.1 shows that every state of is reachable, for each state of we may choose a word with , which is possible by [L2], and send to the Nerode class . If two words reach the same state , then every continuation is accepted or rejected identically from that state, so and determine the same Nerode class. Thus the map is well defined. For any Nerode class , the state reached by on maps to , so the map is surjective onto the state set of .
Both and are minimal DFAs for : by hypothesis and by [L1]. Therefore their finite state sets have the same cardinality. The surjection from step 2.1 between finite sets of equal size is therefore a bijection.
The bijection of steps 2.1 and 3.1 sends the start state to , and its definition via reaching words shows that it preserves letter transitions and accepting states. Hence each is pointed-isomorphic to , so and are pointed-isomorphic to one another.
Depends on
Used by
Nothing in the library uses this result yet.
Dependency tree · two levels
7 results within two dependency steps of this one, each drawn at its shortest distance from it. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, so the chart reads left to right and ends at this result, which carries a heavier outline. Every node is a link to that result. Click elsewhere on the chart to enlarge it.
Sources
- Jean Gallier and Jocelyn Quaintance, Introduction to the Theory of Computation: Some Notes for CIS511 (standard reference, not scraped)