Reachability in 3-VAS

arXiv:2608.04786 · cs.CL · Submitted 2026-08-05 · Read on arXiv

Łukasz Kamiński, Sławomir Lasota

cs.CL

Submitted: 2026-08-05

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: We settle the exact complexity of the reachability problem in (stateless) vector addition systems (VAS) in fixed low dimension.

Terminology

Abstract

We settle the exact complexity of the reachability problem in (stateless) vector addition systems (VAS) in fixed low dimension. In dimensions 2-4 it has only been known to be sandwiched between NP and PSPACE. We prove PSPACE-hardness of the reachability problem for symmetric vector addition systems in dimension 3 (3-VAS), a restricted fragment of general 3-VAS. Combined with previously established PSPACE upper bounds, our result settles the complexity of the problem to be PSPACE-complete in 3-VAS and 4-VAS, as well as in their symmetric fragments.

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