Characterizing the Aperiodicity of Irreducible Markov Chains by Using P Systems

Abstract

It is well known that any irreducible and aperiodic Markov chain has exactly one stationary distribution, and for any arbitrary initial distribution, the sequence of distributions at time n converges to the stationary distribution, that is, the Markov chain is approaching equilibrium as n ! 1. In this paper, a characterization of the aperiodicity in existential terms of some state is given. At the same time, a P system with external output is associated with any irreducible Markov chain. The designed system provides the aperiodicity of that Markov chain and spends a polynomial amount of resources with respect to the size of the input. A formal verification of this solution is presented and a comparative analysis with respect to another known solution is described.