Explorable Parity Automata
This paper addresses the problem of nondeterminism resolution over both finite and infinite words, generalizing history-deterministic (HD) automata. It introduces *explorable automata*—a novel paradigm formalized for the first time—as a unifying framework encompassing both finite-word (explorable) and infinite-word (ω-explorable) settings. The method establishes polynomial-time equivalences between explorable/ω-explorable automata and HD automata. For parity, safety, and coBüchi acceptance conditions, it fully characterizes the computational complexity of deciding explorability as ExpTime-complete, and shows that HD parity automata with fixed index are recognizable in PTime. Furthermore, it precisely delineates the expressive power of explorable automata within the parity index hierarchy. Integrating automata theory, game semantics, and complexity analysis, this work provides a more general and principled modeling framework for controlled nondeterminism.