Logic and Automata

Mathematical logic and automata theory are two scientific disciplines with a fundamentally close relationship. The authors of Logic and Automata take the occasion of the sixtieth birthday of Wolfgang Thomas to present a tour d'horizon of automata theory and logic. The twenty papers in this volume cover many different facets of logic and automata theory, emphasizing the connections to other disciplines such as games, algorithms, and semigroup theory, as well as discussing current challenges in the field

Automata and semigroups recognizing infinite words

This paper is a survey on the algebraic approach to the theory of automata accepting infinite words. We discuss the various acceptance modes (Büchi automata, Muller automata, transition automata, weak recognition by a finite semigroup, ω-semigroups) and prove their equivalence. We also give two algebraic proofs of Mc-Naughton’s theorem on the equivalence between Büchi and Muller automata. Finally, we present some recent work on prophetic automata and discuss its extension to transfinite words