Model Theoretic Complexity of Automatic Structures

We study the complexity of automatic structures via well-established concepts from both logic and model theory, including ordinal heights (of well-founded relations), Scott ranks of structures, and Cantor-Bendixson ranks (of trees). We prove the following results: 1) The ordinal height of any automatic well- founded partial order is bounded by \omega^\omega ; 2) The ordinal heights of automatic well-founded relations are unbounded below the first non-computable ordinal; 3) For any computable ordinal there is an automatic structure of Scott rank at least that ordinal. Moreover, there are automatic structures of Scott rank the first non-computable ordinal and its successor; 4) For any computable ordinal, there is an automatic successor tree of Cantor-Bendixson rank that ordinal.Comment: 23 pages. Extended abstract appeared in Proceedings of TAMC '08, LNCS 4978 pp 514-52

The model-theoretic complexity of automatic linear orders

Automatic structures are—possibly infinite—structures which are finitely presentable by means of finite automata on strings or trees. Largely motivated by the fact that their first-order theories are uniformly decidable, automatic structures gained a lot of attention in the "logic in computer science" community during the last fifteen years. This thesis studies the model-theoretic complexity of automatic linear orders in terms of two complexity measures: the finite-condensation rank and the Ramsey degree. The former is an ordinal which indicates how far a linear order is away from being dense. The corresponding main results establish optimal upper bounds on this rank with respect to several notions of automaticity. The Ramsey degree measures the model-theoretic complexity of well-orders by means of the partition relations studied in combinatorial set theory. This concept is investigated in a purely set-theoretic setting as well as in the context of automatic structures.Auch im Buchhandel erhältlich: The model-theoretic complexity of automatic linear orders / Martin Huschenbett Ilmenau : Univ.-Verl. Ilmenau, 2016. - xiii, 228 Seiten ISBN 978-3-86360-127-0 Preis (Druckausgabe): 16,50

Infinite State AMC-Model Checking for Cryptographic Protocols

Only very little is known about the automatic analysis of cryptographic protocols for game-theoretic security properties. In this paper, we therefore study decidability and complexity of the model checking problem for AMC-formulas over infinite state concurrent game structures induced by cryptographic protocols and the Dolev-Yao intruder. We show that the problem is NEXPTIME-complete when making reasonable assumptions about protocols and for an expressive fragment of AMC, which contains, for example, all properties formulated by Kremer and Raskin in fair ATL for contract-signing and non-repudiation protocols. We also prove that our assumptions on protocols are necessary to obtain decidability

Observation and Distinction. Representing Information in Infinite Games

We compare two approaches for modelling imperfect information in infinite games by using finite-state automata. The first, more standard approach views information as the result of an observation process driven by a sequential Mealy machine. In contrast, the second approach features indistinguishability relations described by synchronous two-tape automata. The indistinguishability-relation model turns out to be strictly more expressive than the one based on observations. We present a characterisation of the indistinguishability relations that admit a representation as a finite-state observation function. We show that the characterisation is decidable, and give a procedure to construct a corresponding Mealy machine whenever one exists