Related papers: Separation for dot-depth two
We consider the class of languages defined in the 2-variable fragment of the first-order logic of the linear order. Many interesting characterizations of this class are known, as well as the fact that restricting the number of quantifier…
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…
The notion of a difference hierarchy, first introduced by Hausdorff, plays an important role in many areas of mathematics, logic and theoretical computer science such as descriptive set theory, complexity theory, and the theory of regular…
An important endeavor in computer science is to understand the expressive power of logical formalisms over discrete structures, such as words. Naturally, "understanding" is not a mathematical notion. This investigation requires therefore a…
Inspired by distributed algorithms, we introduce a new class of finite graph automata that recognize precisely the graph languages definable in monadic second-order logic. For the cases of words and trees, it has been long known that the…
We study three levels in a hierarchy of nondeterminism: A nondeterministic automaton $\mathcal{A}$ is determinizable by pruning (DBP) if we can obtain a deterministic automaton equivalent to $\mathcal{A}$ by removing some of its…
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…
We introduce an operator on classes of regular languages, the star-free closure. Our motivation is to generalize standard results of automata theory within a unified framework. Given an arbitrary input class $C$, the star-free closure…
For every fixed class of regular languages, there is a natural hierarchy of increasingly more general problems: Firstly, the membership problem asks whether a given language belongs to the fixed class of languages. Secondly, the separation…
A separator for two languages is a third language containing the first one and disjoint from the second one. We investigate the following decision problem: given two regular input languages, decide whether there exists a locally testable…
We study tree languages that can be defined in \Delta_2 . These are tree languages definable by a first-order formula whose quantifier prefix is forall exists, and simultaneously by a first-order formula whose quantifier prefix is . For the…
We analyse the pseudofinite monadic second order theory of words over a fixed finite alphabet. In particular we present an axiomatisation of this theory, working in a one-sorted first order framework. The analysis hinges on the fact that…
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…
Regular nested word languages (a.k.a. visibly pushdown languages) strictly extend regular word languages, while preserving their main closure and decidability properties. Previous works have shown that considering languages of 2-nested…
We show that each level of the quantifier alternation hierarchy within FO^2[<] -- the 2-variable fragment of the first order logic of order on words -- is a variety of languages. We then use the notion of condensed rankers, a refinement of…
Higher-dimensional automata (HDA) are a model of concurrency that models simultaneous execution of events using higher dimensional cells. HDA recognize languages of pomsets, a generalization of finite words whose letters are partially…
In dynamical systems such as cellular automata and iterated maps, it is often useful to look at a language or set of symbol sequences produced by the system. There are well-established classification schemes, such as the Chomsky hierarchy,…
This article fits in the area of research that investigates the application of topological duality methods to problems that appear in theoretical computer science. One of the eventual goals of this approach is to derive results in…
We give topological and algebraic characterizations as well as language theoretic descriptions of the following subclasses of first-order logic FO[<] for omega-languages: Sigma_2, FO^2, the intersection of FO^2 and Sigma_2, and Delta_2 (and…
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…