This book provides an introduction to the algebraic theory of semirings, including a detailed treatment of some applications in theoretical computer science. The focus is on the general concepts and statements of the algebraic theory of semirings and those aspects of the theory which are needed for the aforementioned applications. The book also deals with a concept of semirings that includes commutativity of addition, as is usually done for rings.

This book provides an introduction to the algebraic theory of semirings and, in this context, to basic algebraic concepts as e.g. semigroups, lattices and rings. It includes an algebraic theory of infinite sums as well as a detailed treatment of several applications in theoretical computer science. Complete proofs, various examples and exercises (some of them with solutions) make the book suitable for self-study. On the other hand, a more experienced reader who looks for information about the most common concepts and results on semirings will find cross-references throughout the book, a comprehensive bibliography and various hints to it.

Semiring theory stands with a foot in each of two mathematical domains. The first being abstract algebra and the other the fields of applied mathematics such as optimization theory, the theory of discrete-event dynamical systems, automata theory, and formal language theory, as well as from the allied areas of theoretical computer science and theoretical physics. Most important applications of semiring theory in these areas turn out to revolve around the problem of finding the equalizer of a pair of affine maps between two semimodules. In this volume, we chart the state of the art on solving this problem, and present many specific cases of applications. This book is essentially the third part of a trilogy, along with Semirings and their Applications, and Power Algebras over Semirings, both written by the same author and published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1999. While each book can be read independently of the others, to get the full force of the theory and applications one should have access to all three. This work will be of interest to academic and industrial researchers and graduate students. The intent of the book is to bring the applications to the attention of the abstract mathematicians and to make the abstract mathematics available to those who are using these tools in an ad-hoc manner without realizing the full force of the theory.

This work is an updated and considerably expanded version of the author's book The Theory of Semirings, with Applications to Mathematics and Theoretical Science, which has been recognized as the definitive reference work in this area. This edition includes many of the new results in this area, as well as further applications of semiring theory in such areas as idempotent analysis, discrete dynamical systems, formal language theory, fuzzy set theory, optimization etc. The book contains an extensive bibliography and a large number of examples. Audience: This book is aimed both at mathematicians and at researchers in applied mathematics and theoretical computer science. It is also suitable for use as a graduate-level textbook.

The primary objective of this essential text is to emphasize the deep relations existing between the semiring and dioïd structures with graphs and their combinatorial properties. It does so at the same time as demonstrating the modeling and problem-solving flexibility of these structures. In addition the book provides an extensive overview of the mathematical properties employed by "nonclassical" algebraic structures which either extend usual algebra or form a new branch of it.

This comprehensive, encyclopedic text in four parts aims to give the reader — from the graduate student to the researcher/practitioner — a detailed understanding of modern finite semigroup theory, focusing in particular on advanced topics on the cutting edge of research. The q-theory of Finite Semigroups presents important techniques and results, many for the first time in book form, thereby updating and modernizing the semigroup theory literature.

This volume is an outcome of the International Conference on Algebra in celebration of the 70th birthday of Professor Shum Kar-Ping which was held in Gadjah Mada University on 7OCo10 October 2010. As a consequence of the wide coverage of his research interest and work, it presents 54 research papers, all original and referred, describing the latest research and development, and addressing a variety of issues and methods in semigroups, groups, rings and modules, lattices and Hopf Algebra. The book also provides five well-written expository survey articles which feature the structure of finite groups by A Ballester-Bolinches, R Esteban-Romero, and Yangming Li; new results of GrAbner-Shirshov basis by L A Bokut, Yuqun Chen, and K P Shum; polygroups and their properties by B Davvaz; main results on abstract characterizations of algebras of n-place functions obtained in the last 40 years by Wieslaw A Dudek and Valentin S Trokhimenko; Inverse semigroups and their generalizations by X M Ren and K P Shum. Recent work on cones of metrics and combinatorics done by M M Deza et al. is included."

Semirings as an algebraic structure have been known since 1934, but remained unapplied for mathematical purposes for a long time. It has only been in the past decade that they have been used in cryptography. The advantage of (additively) idempotent semirings is that the additive operation does not have an inverse, which can help in preventing the breakage of a cryptosystem. This book describes a number of cryptographic protocols, as well as the hard mathematical problems on which their security is based. It will appeal to cryptographers and specialists in applied algebra.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 49th International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, SOFSEM 2024, held in Cochem, Germany, in February 2024. The 33 full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 81 submissions. The book also contains one invited talk in full paper length. They focus on original research and challenges in foundations of computer science including algorithms, AI-based methods, computational complexity, and formal models.