Decision Problems for Petri Nets and Vector Addition Systems

Abstract

Petri Nets, Generalized Petri Nets, and Vector Addition Systems can represent each other and thus have common decideability problems. The graphical appeal of Petri Nets is used in a new presentation of the classical problems of boundedness (decidable) and inclusion (undecidable). Various forms of the Reachability Problem are shown to be recursively equivalent to the Liveness Problem for Petri Nets. The decideability of these questions is still open, and some arguments both for and against the decidability of Liveness are presented.