2 research outputs found
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
First-Order Model Checking on Generalisations of Pushdown Graphs
We study the first-order model checking problem on two generalisations of
pushdown graphs. The first class is the class of nested pushdown trees. The
other is the class of collapsible pushdown graphs. Our main results are the
following. First-order logic with reachability is uniformly decidable on nested
pushdown trees. Considering first-order logic without reachability, we prove
decidability in doubly exponential alternating time with linearly many
alternations. First-order logic with regular reachability predicates is
uniformly decidable on level 2 collapsible pushdown graphs. Moreover, nested
pushdown trees are first-order interpretable in collapsible pushdown graphs of
level 2. This interpretation can be extended to an interpretation of the class
of higher-order nested pushdown trees in the collapsible pushdown graph
hierarchy. We prove that the second level of this new hierarchy of nested trees
has decidable first-order model checking. Our decidability result for
collapsible pushdown graph relies on the fact that level 2 collapsible pushdown
graphs are uniform tree-automatic. Our last result concerns tree-automatic
structures in general. We prove that first-order logic extended by Ramsey
quantifiers is decidable on all tree-automatic structures.Comment: phd thesis, 255 page