Fragments of first-order logic over infinite words

We give topological and algebraic characterizations as well as language theoretic descriptions of the following subclasses of first-order logic FO[<] for omega-languages: Sigma_2, FO^2, the intersection of FO^2 and Sigma_2, and Delta_2 (and by duality Pi_2 and the intersection of FO^2 and Pi_2). These descriptions extend the respective results for finite words. In particular, we relate the above fragments to language classes of certain (unambiguous) polynomials. An immediate consequence is the decidability of the membership problem of these classes, but this was shown before by Wilke and Bojanczyk and is therefore not our main focus. The paper is about the interplay of algebraic, topological, and language theoretic properties.Comment: Conference version presented at 26th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science, STACS 200

Fragments of first-order logic over infinite words

We give topological and algebraic characterizations as well as language theoretic descriptions of the following subclasses of first-order logic for omega-languages: Sigma2, FO2, the intersection of FO2 and Sigma2, and Delta2 (and by duality Pi2 and the intersection of FO2 and Pi2). These descriptions extend the respective results for finite words. In particular, we relate the above fragments to language classes of certain (unambiguous) polynomials. An immediate consequence is the decidability of the membership problem of these classes, but this was shown before by Wilke and Bojanczyk and is therefore not our main focus. The paper is about the interplay of algebraic, topological, and language theoretic properties

Topologies Refining the Cantor Topology on X ω

International audienceThe space of one-sided infinite words plays a crucial rôle in several parts of Theoretical Computer Science. Usually, it is convenient to regard this space as a metric space, the Cantor-space. It turned out that for several purposes topologies other than the one of the Cantor-space are useful, e.g. for studying fragments of first-order logic over infinite words or for a topological characterisation of random infinite words. It is shown that both of these topologies refine the topology of the Cantor-space. Moreover, from common features of these topologies we extract properties which characterise a large class of topologies. It turns out that, for this general class of topologies, the corresponding closure and interior operators respect the shift operations and also, to some respect, the definability of sets of infinite words by finite automata

Languages of Dot-depth One over Infinite Words

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, successor, minimum, and maximum predicates. Knast (1983) has shown that it is decidable whether a language has dot-depth one. We extend Knast's result to infinite words. In particular, we describe the class of languages definable in alternation-free first-order logic over infinite words, and we give an effective characterization of this fragment. This characterization has two components. The first component is identical to Knast's algebraic property for finite words and the second component is a topological property, namely being a Boolean combination of Cantor sets. As an intermediate step we consider finite and infinite words simultaneously. We then obtain the results for infinite words as well as for finite words as special cases. In particular, we give a new proof of Knast's Theorem on languages of dot-depth one over finite words.Comment: Presented at LICS 201

Partially Ordered Two-way B\"uchi Automata

We introduce partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata and characterize their expressive power in terms of fragments of first-order logic FO[<]. Partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata are B\"uchi automata which can change the direction in which the input is processed with the constraint that whenever a state is left, it is never re-entered again. Nondeterministic partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata coincide with the first-order fragment Sigma2. Our main contribution is that deterministic partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata are expressively complete for the first-order fragment Delta2. As an intermediate step, we show that deterministic partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata are effectively closed under Boolean operations. A small model property yields coNP-completeness of the emptiness problem and the inclusion problem for deterministic partially ordered two-way B\"uchi automata.Comment: The results of this paper were presented at CIAA 2010; University of Stuttgart, Computer Scienc

Partially ordered two-way Büchi automata

We introduce partially ordered two-way Büchi automata over infinite words. As for finite words, the nondeterministic variant recognizes the fragment Sigma2 of first-order logic FO[<] and the deterministic version yields the Delta2-definable omega-languages. As a byproduct of our results, we show that deterministic partially ordered two-way Büchi automata are effectively closed under Boolean operations. In addition, we have coNP-completeness results for the emptiness problem and the inclusion problem over deterministic partially ordered two-way Büchi automata

Effiziente Algorithmen für das Separierbarkeitsproblem der alternierungsfreien Logik über unendlichen Wörtern

Das Separierbarkeitsproblem befasst sich mit der Frage, gegeben zwei Mengen aus einer Klasse, ob es möglich ist, sie durch eine weitere Menge aus einer kleineren Klasse zu separieren. Für den Fall der Separierbarkeit von regulären Sprachen durch eine piecewise testable Sprache über unendlichen Wörtern wird in dieser Arbeit ein Entscheidungsalgorithmus mit polynomialer Laufzeit vorgestellt. Der Beweis orientiert sich an einer Arbeit über den entsprechenden Fall der Separierbarkeit über endlichen Wörtern von L. van Rooijen und M. Zeitoun