Box-Reachability in Vector Addition Systems

Abstract: We consider a variant of reachability in Vector Addition Systems (VAS) dubbed \emph{box reachability}, whereby a vector $v\in \mathbb{N}^d$ is box-reachable from $0$ in a VAS $V$ if $V$ admits a path from $0$ to $v$ that not only stays in the positive orthant (as in the standard VAS semantics), but also stays below $v$, i.e., within the ``box'' whose opposite corners are $0$ and $v$. Our main result is that for two-dimensional VAS, the set of box-reachable vertices almost coincides with the standard reachability set: the two sets coincide for all vectors whose coordinates are both above some threshold $W$. We also study properties of box-reachability, exploring the differences and similarities with standard reachability. Technically, our main result is proved using powerful machinery from convex geometry.