Related papers: Separation and covering for group based concatenat…
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…
Separation logic and its variants can describe various properties on pointer programs. However, when it comes to properties on sequences, one may find it hard to formalize. To deal with properties on variable-length sequences and multilevel…
We look at classes of languages associated to the fragment of first-order logic B{\Sigma}1 which disallows quantifier alternations. Each class is defined by choosing the set of predicates on positions that may be used. Two key such…
We look at concatenation hierarchies of classes of regular languages. Each such hierarchy is determined by a single class, its basis: level $n$ is built by applying the Boolean polynomial closure operator (BPol), $n$ times to the basis. A…
We investigate two operators on classes of regular languages: polynomial closure (Pol) and Boolean closure (Bool). We apply these operators to classes of group languages G and to their well-suited extensions G+, which is the least Boolean…
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 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 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…
We indicate a way of distinguishing between structures, for which, two structures are said to be separable.Being separable implies being non-isomorphic. We show that for any first order theory $T$ in a countable language, if it has an…
Separability for groups refers to the question which subsets of a group can be detected in its finite quotients. Classically, separability is studied in terms of which classes have a certain separability property, and this question is…
We show that the decidability of the first-order theory of the language that combines Boolean algebras of sets of uninterpreted elements with Presburger arithmetic operations. We thereby disprove a recent conjecture that this theory is…
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;…
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…
In this paper we address the decision problem for a fragment of set theory with restricted quantification which extends the language studied in [4] with pair related quantifiers and constructs, in view of possible applications in the field…
The study of various decision problems for logic fragments has a long history in computer science. This paper is on the membership problem for a fragment of first-order logic over infinite words; the membership problem asks for a given…
We characterize the languages in the individual levels of the quantifier alternation hierarchy of first-order logic with two variables by identities. This implies decidability of the individual levels. More generally we show that the…
We consider the two-variable fragment FO^2[<] of first-order logic over finite words. Numerous characterizations of this class are known. Th\'erien and Wilke have shown that it is decidable whether a given regular language is definable in…
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…