Certificates for Probabilistic Pushdown Automata via Optimistic Value Iteration

Lecture notes in computer science, pp. 391–409

Abstract

Abstract Probabilistic pushdown automata (pPDA) are a standard model for discrete probabilistic programs with procedures and recursion. In pPDA, many quantitative properties are characterized as least fixpoints of polynomial equation systems. In this paper, we study the problem ofcertifyingthat these quantities lie within certain bounds. To this end, we first characterize the polynomial systems that admit easy-to-check certificates for validating bounds on their least fixpoint. Second, we present a sound and complete Optimistic Value Iteration algorithm for computing such certificates. Third, we show how certificates for polynomial systems can be transferred to certificates for various quantitative pPDA properties. Experiments demonstrate that our algorithm computes succinct certificates for several intricate example programs as well as stochastic context-free grammars with $$> 10^4$$ production rules.

Authors 2

1. Tobias Winkler corresponding Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

2. Joost-Pieter Katoen Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany