Borel Ranks and Wadge Degrees of Context Free Omega Languages

We show that, from a topological point of view, considering the Borel and the Wadge hierarchies, 1-counter B\"uchi automata have the same accepting power than Turing machines equipped with a B\"uchi acceptance condition. In particular, for every non null recursive ordinal alpha, there exist some Sigma^0_alpha-complete and some Pi^0_alpha-complete omega context free languages accepted by 1-counter B\"uchi automata, and the supremum of the set of Borel ranks of context free omega languages is the ordinal gamma^1_2 which is strictly greater than the first non recursive ordinal. This very surprising result gives answers to questions of H. Lescow and W. Thomas [Logical Specifications of Infinite Computations, In:"A Decade of Concurrency", LNCS 803, Springer, 1994, p. 583-621]

Deciding the topological complexity of Büchi languages *

International audienceWe study the topological complexity of languages of Büchi automata on infinite binary trees. We show that such a language is either Borel and WMSO-definable, or Σ 1 1-complete and not WMSO-definable; moreover it can be algorithmically decided which of the two cases holds. The proof relies on a direct reduction to deciding the winner in a finite game with a regular winning condition

Baire and automata

In his thesis Baire defined functions of Baire class 1. A function f is of Baire class 1 if it is the pointwise limit of a sequence of continuous functions. Baire proves the following theorem. A function f is not of class 1 if and only if there exists a closed nonempty set F such that the restriction of f to F has no point of continuity. We prove the automaton version of this theorem. An ω-rational function is not of class 1 if and only if there exists a closed nonempty set F recognized by a Büchi automaton such that the restriction of f to F has no point of continuity. This gives us the opportunity for a discussion on Hausdorff's analysis of Δ°2, ordinals, transfinite induction and some applications of computer science