Related papers: Deciding semantic finiteness of pushdown processes…
A classical theorem states that the set of languages given by a pushdown automaton coincides with the set of languages given by a context-free grammar. In previous work, we proved the pendant of this theorem in a setting with interaction:…
We show that for any $i > 0$, it is decidable, given a regular language, whether it is expressible in the $\Sigma_i[<]$ fragment of first-order logic FO[<]. This settles a question open since 1971. Our main technical result relies on the…
We give a new proof of the decidability of reachability in alternating pushdown systems, showing that it is a simple consequence of a cut-elimination theorem for some natural-deduction style inference systems. Then, we show how this result…
The model of asynchronous programming arises in many contexts, from low-level systems software to high-level web programming. We take a language-theoretic perspective and show general decidability and undecidability results for asynchronous…
We study the expressiveness and succinctness of history-deterministic pushdown automata (HD-PDA) over finite words, that is, pushdown automata whose nondeterminism can be resolved based on the run constructed so far, but independently of…
We present an algorithm which modifies a deterministic pushdown automaton (DPDA) such that (i) the marked language is preserved, (ii) lifelocks are removed, (iii) deadlocks are removed, (iv) all states and edges are accessible, and (v)…
We consider first-order logic over the subword ordering on finite words, where each word is available as a constant. Our first result is that the $\Sigma_1$ theory is undecidable (already over two letters). We investigate the decidability…
We investigate the decidability of the definability problem for fragments of first order logic over finite words enriched with modular predicates. Our approach aims toward the most generic statements that we could achieve, which…
Recently, an infinite hierarchy of languages accepted by stateless deterministic pushdown automata has been established based on the number of pushdown symbols. However, the witness language for the n-th level of the hierarchy is over an…
This paper contains two results on timed extensions of pushdown automata (PDA). As our first result we prove that the model of dense-timed PDA of Abdulla et al. collapses: it is expressively equivalent to dense-timed PDA with timeless…
We show that the first-order logical theory of the binary overlap-free words (and, more generally, the ${\alpha}$-free words for rational ${\alpha}$, $2 < {\alpha} \leq 7/3$), is decidable. As a consequence, many results previously obtained…
It is well known that for a regular tree language it is decidable whether or not it can be recognized by a deterministic top-down tree automaton (DTA). However, the computational complexity of this problem has not been studied. We show that…
A fundamental question in logic and verification is the following: for which unary predicates $P_1, \ldots, P_k$ is the monadic second-order theory of $\langle \mathbb{N}; <, P_1, \ldots, P_k \rangle$ decidable? Equivalently, for which…
We show that the first-order theory of Sturmian words over Presburger arithmetic is decidable. Using a general adder recognizing addition in Ostrowski numeration systems by Baranwal, Schaeffer and Shallit, we prove that the first-order…
Given two pushdown systems, the bisimilarity problem asks whether they are bisimilar. While this problem is known to be decidable our main result states that it is nonelementary, improving EXPTIME-hardness, which was the previously best…
We show that deterministic collapsible pushdown automata of second order can recognize a language that is not recognizable by any deterministic higher-order pushdown automaton (without collapse) of any order. This implies that there exists…
An automaton is history-deterministic if its nondeterminism can be resolved on the fly, only using the prefix of the word read so far. This mild form of nondeterminism has attracted particular attention for its applications in synthesis…
Higher-order pushdown systems and ground tree rewriting systems can be seen as extensions of suffix word rewriting systems. Both classes generate infinite graphs with interesting logical properties. Indeed, the model-checking problem for…
We compare pushdown automata (PDAs for short) against other representations. First, we show that there is a family of PDAs over a unary alphabet with $n$ states and $p \geq 2n + 4$ stack symbols that accepts one single long word for which…
Nondeterministic Discounted-Sum Automata (NDAs) are nondeterministic finite automata equipped with a discounting factor $\lambda>1$, and whose transitions are labelled by weights. The value of a run of an NDA is the discounted sum of the…