Related papers: Separating regular languages with two quantifier a…
We exhibit the construction of a deterministic automaton that, given k > 0, recognizes the (regular) language of k-differentiable words. Our approach follows a scheme of Crochemore et al. based on minimal forbidden words. We extend this…
We introduce a flexible class of well-quasi-orderings (WQOs) on words that generalizes the ordering of (not necessarily contiguous) subwords. Each such WQO induces a class of piecewise testable languages (PTLs) as Boolean combinations of…
The dot-depth hierarchy is a classification of star-free languages. It is related to the quantifier alternation hierarchy of first-order logic over finite words. We consider fragments of languages with dot-depth 1/2 and dot-depth 1 obtained…
Automatic differentiation plays a prominent role in scientific computing and in modern machine learning, often in the context of powerful programming systems. The relation of the various embodiments of automatic differentiation to the…
We investigate in a method for proving separation results for abstract classes of languages. A well established method to characterize varieties of regular languages are identities. We use a recently established generalization of these…
In the Intersection Non-Emptiness problem, we are given a list of finite automata $A_1,A_2,\dots,A_m$ over a common alphabet $\Sigma$ as input, and the goal is to determine whether some string $w\in \Sigma^*$ lies in the intersection of the…
In the computational-mechanics structural analysis of one-dimensional cellular automata the following automata-theoretic analogue of the \emph{change-point problem} from time series analysis arises: \emph{Given a string $\sigma$ and a…
The separability problem for word languages of a class $\mathcal{C}$ by languages of a class $\mathcal{S}$ asks, for two given languages $I$ and $E$ from $\mathcal{C}$, whether there exists a language $S$ from $\mathcal{S}$ that includes…
For fragments L of first-order logic (FO) with counting quantifiers, we consider the definability problem, which asks whether a given L-formula can be equivalently expressed by a formula in some fragment of L without counting, and the more…
We address the separability problem for straight-line string constraints. The separability problem for languages of a class C by a class S asks: given two languages A and B in C, does there exist a language I in S separating A and B (i.e.,…
We investigate the expressive power of quantifier alternation hierarchy of first-order logic over words. This hierarchy includes the classes ${\Sigma}_i$ (sentences having at most $i$ blocks of quantifiers starting with an $\exists$) and…
The class of Boolean combinations of tree languages recognized by deterministic top-down tree automata (also known as deterministic root-to-frontier automata) is studied. The problem of determining for a given regular tree language whether…
In a \emph{separability problem}, we are given two sets $K$ and $L$ from a class $\mathcal{C}$, and we want to decide whether there exists a set $S$ from a class $\mathcal{S}$ such that $K\subseteq S$ and $S\cap L=\emptyset$. In this case,…
We continue our study of open and closed languages. We investigate how the properties of being open and closed are preserved under concatenation. We investigate analogues, in formal languages, of the separation axioms in topological spaces;…
We study the class of star-free languages. A long-standing goal is to classify them by the complexity of their descriptions. The most influential research effort involves concatenation hierarchies, which measure alternations between…
Sets with atoms serve as an alternative to ZFC foundations for mathematics, where some infinite, though highly symmetric sets, behave in a finitistic way. Therefore, one can try to carry over analysis of the classical algorithms from finite…
Indexed languages are a classical notion in formal language theory, which has attracted attention in recent decades due to its role in higher-order model checking: They are precisely the languages accepted by order-2 pushdown automata. The…
This paper builds model-theoretic tools to detect changes in complexity among the simple theories. We develop a generalization of dividing, called shearing, which depends on a so-called context c. This leads to defining c-superstability, a…
The regular separability problem asks, for two given languages, if there exists a regular language including one of them but disjoint from the other. Our main result is decidability, and PSpace-completeness, of the regular separability…
The classical decision problem, as it is understood today, is the quest for a delineation between the decidable and the undecidable parts of first-order logic based on elegant syntactic criteria. In this paper, we treat the concept of…