Related papers: Dot-depth three, return of the J-class
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 a famous decision problem in automata theory: separation. Given a class of language C, the separation problem for C takes as input two regular languages and asks whether there exists a third one which belongs to C, includes…
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…
The purpose of this paper is to provide efficient algorithms that decide membership for classes of several Boolean hierarchies for which efficiency (or even decidability) were previously not known. We develop new forbidden-chain…
Polynomial closure is a standard operator which is applied to a class of regular languages. In the paper, we investigate three restrictions called left (LPol), right (RPol) and mixed polynomial closure (MPol). The first two were known while…
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…
Concatenation hierarchies are classifications of regular languages. All such hierarchies are built through the same construction process: start from an initial class of languages and build new levels using two generic operations.…
We investigate the complexity of the separation problem associated to classes of regular languages. For a class C, C-separation takes two regular languages as input and asks whether there exists a third language in C which includes the…
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…
Over finite words, languages of dot-depth one are expressively complete for alternation-free first-order logic. This fragment is also known as the Boolean closure of existential first-order logic. Here, the atomic formulas comprise order,…
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…
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 investigate the polynomial closure operation (C -> Pol(C)) defined on classes of regular languages. We present an interesting and useful connection relating the separation problem for the class C and the membership problem for it…
We report some further developments regarding the language theory of higher-dimensional automata (HDAs). Regular languages of HDAs are sets of finite interval partially ordered multisets (pomsets) with interfaces. We show a pumping lemma…
Group languages are regular languages recognized by finite groups, or equivalently by finite automata in which each letter induces a permutation on the set of states. We investigate the separation problem for this class of languages: given…
We investigate two problems for a class C of regular word languages. The C-membership problem asks for an algorithm to decide whether an input language belongs to C. The C-separation problem asks for an algorithm that, given as input two…
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 investigate the quantifier alternation hierarchy in first-order logic on finite words. Levels in this hierarchy are defined by counting the number of quantifier alternations in formulas. We prove that one can decide membership of a…
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…
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…