10 research outputs found
Cardinality and counting quantifiers on omega-automatic structures
We investigate structures that can be represented by
omega-automata, so called omega-automatic structures, and prove
that relations defined over such structures in first-order logic
expanded by the first-order quantifiers `there exist at most
many\u27, \u27there exist finitely many\u27 and \u27there exist
modulo many\u27 are omega-regular. The proof identifies certain
algebraic properties of omega-semigroups.
As a consequence an omega-regular equivalence relation of countable
index has an omega-regular set of representatives. This implies
Blumensath\u27s conjecture that a countable structure with an
-automatic presentation can be represented using automata
on finite words. This also complements a very recent result of
Hj"orth, Khoussainov, Montalban and Nies showing that there is an
omega-automatic structure which has no injective presentation
Cardinality and counting quantifiers on omega-automatic structures
We investigate structures that can be represented by omega-automata, so
called omega-automatic structures, and prove that relations defined over such
structures in first-order logic expanded by the first-order quantifiers `there
exist at most many', 'there exist finitely many' and 'there exist
modulo many' are omega-regular. The proof identifies certain algebraic
properties of omega-semigroups. As a consequence an omega-regular equivalence
relation of countable index has an omega-regular set of representatives. This
implies Blumensath's conjecture that a countable structure with an
-automatic presentation can be represented using automata on finite
words. This also complements a very recent result of Hj\"orth, Khoussainov,
Montalban and Nies showing that there is an omega-automatic structure which has
no injective presentation
Is Ramsey's theorem omega-automatic?
We study the existence of infinite cliques in omega-automatic (hyper-)graphs.
It turns out that the situation is much nicer than in general uncountable
graphs, but not as nice as for automatic graphs.
More specifically, we show that every uncountable omega-automatic graph
contains an uncountable co-context-free clique or anticlique, but not
necessarily a context-free (let alone regular) clique or anticlique. We also
show that uncountable omega-automatic ternary hypergraphs need not have
uncountable cliques or anticliques at all
The Isomorphism Relation Between Tree-Automatic Structures
An -tree-automatic structure is a relational structure whose domain
and relations are accepted by Muller or Rabin tree automata. We investigate in
this paper the isomorphism problem for -tree-automatic structures. We
prove first that the isomorphism relation for -tree-automatic boolean
algebras (respectively, partial orders, rings, commutative rings, non
commutative rings, non commutative groups, nilpotent groups of class n >1) is
not determined by the axiomatic system ZFC. Then we prove that the isomorphism
problem for -tree-automatic boolean algebras (respectively, partial
orders, rings, commutative rings, non commutative rings, non commutative
groups, nilpotent groups of class n >1) is neither a -set nor a
-set
Automatic structures of bounded degree revisited
The first-order theory of a string automatic structure is known to be
decidable, but there are examples of string automatic structures with
nonelementary first-order theories. We prove that the first-order theory of a
string automatic structure of bounded degree is decidable in doubly exponential
space (for injective automatic presentations, this holds even uniformly). This
result is shown to be optimal since we also present a string automatic
structure of bounded degree whose first-order theory is hard for 2EXPSPACE. We
prove similar results also for tree automatic structures. These findings close
the gaps left open in a previous paper of the second author by improving both,
the lower and the upper bounds.Comment: 26 page
Interpretations in Trees with Countably Many Branches
Abstract—We study the expressive power of logical interpreta-tions on the class of scattered trees, namely those with countably many infinite branches. Scattered trees can be thought of as the tree analogue of scattered linear orders. Every scattered tree has an ordinal rank that reflects the structure of its infinite branches. We prove, roughly, that trees and orders of large rank cannot be interpreted in scattered trees of small rank. We consider a quite general notion of interpretation: each element of the interpreted structure is represented by a set of tuples of subsets of the interpreting tree. Our trees are countable, not necessarily finitely branching, and may have finitely many unary predicates as labellings. We also show how to replace injective set-interpretations in (not necessarily scattered) trees by ‘finitary’ set-interpretations. Index Terms—Composition method, finite-set interpretations, infinite scattered trees, monadic second order logic. I