The Simplest Non-Regular Deterministic Context-Free Language.

We introduce a new notion of 𝒞-simple problems for a class 𝒞 of decision problems (i.e. languages), w.r.t. a particular reduction. A problem is 𝒞-simple if it can be reduced to each problem in 𝒞. This can be viewed as a conceptual counterpart to 𝒞-hard problems to which all problems in 𝒞 reduce. Our concrete example is the class of non-regular deterministic context-free languages (DCFL'), with a truth-table reduction by Mealy machines. The main technical result is a proof that the DCFL' language L_# = {0^n1^n ∣ n ≥ 1} is DCFL'-simple, and can be thus viewed as one of the simplest languages in the class DCFL', in a precise sense. The notion of DCFL'-simple languages is nontrivial: e.g., the language L_R = {wcw^R∣ w ∈ {a,b}^*} is not DCFL'-simple. By describing an application in the area of neural networks (elaborated in another paper), we demonstrate that 𝒞-simple problems under suitable reductions can provide a tool for expanding the lower-bound results known for single problems to the whole classes of problems.