Algebra-coalgebra duality in brzozowski's minimization algorithm

We give a new presentation of Brzozowski's algorithm to minimize finite automata using elementary facts from universal algebra and coalgebra and building on earlier work by Arbib and Manes on a categorical presentation of Kalman duality between reachability and observability. This leads to a simple proof of its correctness and opens the door to further generalizations. Notably, we derive algorithms to obtain minimal language equivalent automata from Moore nondeterministic and weighted automata.

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