Related papers: Fife's Theorem Revisited
We introduce Symbolic Alternating Finite Automata (s-AFA) as an expressive, succinct, and decidable model for describing sets of finite sequences over arbitrary alphabets. Boolean operations over s-AFAs have linear complexity, which is in…
This paper investigates the class of finitely presented monoids defined by homogeneous (length-preserving) relations from a computational perspective. The properties of admitting a finite complete rewriting system, having finite derivation…
We use automated theorem provers to significantly shorten a formal development in higher order set theory. The development includes many standard theorems such as the fundamental theorem of arithmetic and irrationality of square root of…
Words are sequences of letters over a finite alphabet. We study two intimately related topics for this object: quasi-randomness and limit theory. With respect to the first topic we investigate the notion of uniform distribution of letters…
We generalize Axel Thue's familiar definition of overlaps in words, and show that there are no infinite words containing split occurrences of these generalized overlaps. Along the way we prove a useful theorem about repeated disjoint…
Parikh's theorem states that the Parikh image of a context-free language is semilinear or, equivalently, that every context-free language has the same Parikh image as some regular language. We present a very simple construction that, given…
Parikh automata extend finite automata by counters that can be tested for membership in a semilinear set, but only at the end of a run, thereby preserving many of the desirable algorithmic properties of finite automata. Here, we study the…
We introduce a class of sets of words which is a natural common generalization of Sturmian sets and of interval exchange sets. This class of sets consists of the uniformly recurrent tree sets, where the tree sets are defined by a condition…
Finitary Idealized Concurrent Algol (FICA) is a prototypical programming language combining functional, imperative, and concurrent computation. There exists a fully abstract game model of FICA, which in principle can be used to prove…
A deterministic finite automaton in which every non-empty set of states occurs as the image of the whole state set under the action of a suitable input word is called completely reachable. We characterize such automata in terms of graphs…
This paper establishes a lower bound on the number of states necessary in the worst case to simulate an $n$-state two-way nondeterministic finite automaton (2NFA) by a one-way unambiguous finite automaton (UFA). It is proved that for every…
It is shown that the big free group (the set of countably-long words over a countable alphabet) is almost free, in the sense that any function from the alphabet to a compact topological group factors through a homomorphism. This statement…
We continue our work on the model theory of free lattices, solving two of the main open problems from our first paper on the subject. Our main result is that the universal (existential) theory of infinite free lattices is decidable. Our…
We consider the computability and complexity of decision questions for Probabilistic Finite Automata (PFA) with sub-exponential ambiguity. We show that the emptiness problem for strict and non-strict cut-points of polynomially ambiguous…
The proofs first generated by automated theorem provers are far from optimal by any measure of simplicity. In this paper I describe a technique for simplifying automated proofs. Hopefully this discussion will stimulate interest in the…
Alternating timed automata on infinite words are considered. The main result is a characterization of acceptance conditions for which the emptiness problem for these automata is decidable. This result implies new decidability results for…
A word is square-free if it does not contain a nonempty word of the form $XX$ as a factor. A famous 1906 result of Thue asserts that there exist arbitrarily long square-free words over a $3$-letter alphabet. We study square-free words with…
We introduce a model-complete theory which completely axiomatizes the structure $Z_{\alpha}=(Z, +, 0, 1, f)$ where $f : x \to \lfloor{\alpha} x \rfloor $ is a unary function with $\alpha$ a fixed transcendental number. When $\alpha$ is…
We consider two-variable first-order logic $\text{FO}^2$ and its quantifier alternation hierarchies over both finite and infinite words. Our main results are forbidden patterns for deterministic automata (finite words) and for Carton-Michel…
An infinite word is an infinite Lyndon word if it is smaller, with respect to the lexicographic order, than all its proper suffixes, or equivalently if it has infinitely many finite Lyndon words as prefixes. A characterization of binary…