Related papers: On all things star-free
The class of Unambiguous Star-Free Regular Languages (UL) was defined by Schutzenberger as the class of languages defined by Unambiguous Polynomials. UL has been variously characterized (over finite words) by logics such as TL[X_a,Y_a],…
The superamalgamation property is a strong form of the amalgamation property which applies to ordered structures; it has found many applications in algebraic logic. We show that superamalgamation has some interest also from the pure…
A language $L$ is said to be ${\cal C}$-measurable, where ${\cal C}$ is a class of languages, if there is an infinite sequence of languages in ${\cal C}$ that ``converges'' to $L$. We investigate the properties of ${\cal C}$-measurability…
We will study some important properties of Boolean functions based on newly introduced concepts called Special Decomposition of a Set and Special Covering of a Set. These concepts enable us to study important problems concerning Boolean…
We consider the termination/non-termination property of a class of loops. Such loops are commonly used abstractions of real program pieces. Second-order logic is a convenient language to express non-termination. Of course, such property is…
Motivated by applications in reliable and secure communication, we address the problem of tiling (or partitioning) a finite constellation in $\mathbb{Z}_{2^L}^n$ by subsets, in the case that the constellation does not possess an abelian…
We survey recent results concerning the complexity of regular languages represented by their minimal deterministic finite automata. In addition to the quotient complexity of the language -- which is the number of its (left) quotients, and…
We describe a program to prove the Kepler conjecture on sphere packings. We then carry out the first step of this program. Each packing determines a decomposition of space into Delaunay simplices, which are grouped together into finite…
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…
We show that if we enrich first order logic by allowing quantification over isomorphisms between definable ordered fields the resulting logic, L(Q_{Of}), is fully compact. In this logic, we can give standard compactness proofs of various…
We completely determine the free infinite divisibility for the Boolean stable law which is parametrized by a stability index $\alpha$ and an asymmetry coefficient $\rho$. We prove that the Boolean stable law is freely infinitely divisible…
We prove that there exists no algorithm to decide whether the language generated by a context-free grammar is dense with respect to the lexicographic ordering. As a corollary to this result, we show that it is undecidable whether the…
The dot-depth hierarchy of Brzozowski and Cohen classifies the star-free languages of finite words. By a theorem of McNaughton and Papert, these are also the first-order definable languages. The dot-depth rose to prominence following the…
We investigate (quantifier-free) spatial constraint languages with equality, contact and connectedness predicates as well as Boolean operations on regions, interpreted over low-dimensional Euclidean spaces. We show that the complexity of…
The downward closure of a language is the set of all (not necessarily contiguous) subwords of its members. It is well-known that the downward closure of every language is regular. Moreover, recent results show that downward closures are…
First we identify the free algebras of the class of algebras of binary relations equipped with the composition and domain operations. Elements of the free algebras are pointed labelled finite rooted trees. Then we extend to the analogous…
We study the problem of deciding whether a given language is directed. A language $L$ is \emph{directed} if every pair of words in $L$ have a common (scattered) superword in $L$. Deciding directedness is a fundamental problem in connection…
We give another proof of a theorem of Fife - understood broadly as providing a finite automaton that gives a complete description of all infinite binary overlap-free words. Our proof is significantly simpler than those in the literature. As…
Surface groups are determined among limit groups by their profinite completions. As a corollary, the set of surface words in a free group is closed in the profinite topology.
We prove that every word is strongly concise in the class of compact $R$-analytic groups.