English

Good-for-games $\omega$-Pushdown Automata

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2023-06-22 v7 Computer Science and Game Theory

Abstract

We introduce good-for-games ω\omega-pushdown automata (ω\omega-GFG-PDA). These are automata whose nondeterminism can be resolved based on the input processed so far. Good-for-gameness enables automata to be composed with games, trees, and other automata, applications which otherwise require deterministic automata. Our main results are that ω\omega-GFG-PDA are more expressive than deterministic ω\omega- pushdown automata and that solving infinite games with winning conditions specified by ω\omega-GFG-PDA is EXPTIME-complete. Thus, we have identified a new class of ω\omega-contextfree winning conditions for which solving games is decidable. It follows that the universality problem for ω\omega-GFG-PDA is in EXPTIME as well. Moreover, we study closure properties of the class of languages recognized by ω\omega-GFG- PDA and decidability of good-for-gameness of ω\omega-pushdown automata and languages. Finally, we compare ω\omega-GFG-PDA to ω\omega-visibly PDA, study the resources necessary to resolve the nondeterminism in ω\omega-GFG-PDA, and prove that the parity index hierarchy for ω\omega-GFG-PDA is infinite. This is a corrected version of the paper arXiv:2001.04392v6 published originally on January 7, 2022.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.04392,
  title  = {Good-for-games $\omega$-Pushdown Automata},
  author = {Karoliina Lehtinen and Martin Zimmermann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.04392},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:09:58.596Z