Automata on $S$-adic words
Abstract
A fundamental question in logic and verification is the following: for which unary predicates is the monadic second-order theory of decidable? Equivalently, for which infinite words can we decide whether a given B\"uchi automaton accepts ? Carton and Thomas showed decidability in case is a fixed point of a letter-to-word substitution , i.e., . However, abundantly more words, e.g., Sturmian words, are characterised by a broader notion of self-similarity that uses a set of substitutions. A word is said to be directed by a sequence over if there is a sequence of words such that and for all ; such is called -adic. We study the automaton acceptance problem for such words and prove, among others, the following. Given finite and an automaton , we can compute an automaton that accepts if and only if directs a word accepted by . Thus we can algorithmically answer questions of the form "Which -adic words are accepted by a given automaton ?"
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.17460,
title = {Automata on $S$-adic words},
author = {Valérie Berthé and Toghrul Karimov and Mihir Vahanwala},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.17460},
year = {2025}
}