In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Application and Theory of Petri Nets, 1989, Bonn, Germany, pages 1-21. 1989.
Abstract: A new and simple characterization theorem of minimal deadlocks is given in terms of path properties based upon the original notions of ``own transition'' and ``alternating circuit''. Then, a polynomial algorithm is proposed that allows to decide whether a given place subset is a minimal deadlock. Last a straight forward extension of these results to traps is proposed.