Aperiodic tilings and entropy

In this paper we present a construction of Kari-Culik aperiodic tile set - the smallest known until now. With the help of this construction, we prove that this tileset has positive entropy. We also explain why this result was not expected

Subshifts as Models for MSO Logic

We study the Monadic Second Order (MSO) Hierarchy over colourings of the discrete plane, and draw links between classes of formula and classes of subshifts. We give a characterization of existential MSO in terms of projections of tilings, and of universal sentences in terms of combinations of "pattern counting" subshifts. Conversely, we characterise logic fragments corresponding to various classes of subshifts (subshifts of finite type, sofic subshifts, all subshifts). Finally, we show by a separation result how the situation here is different from the case of tiling pictures studied earlier by Giammarresi et al.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:0904.245

Decidability Results for the Boundedness Problem

We prove decidability of the boundedness problem for monadic least fixed-point recursion based on positive monadic second-order (MSO) formulae over trees. Given an MSO-formula phi(X,x) that is positive in X, it is decidable whether the fixed-point recursion based on phi is spurious over the class of all trees in the sense that there is some uniform finite bound for the number of iterations phi takes to reach its least fixed point, uniformly across all trees. We also identify the exact complexity of this problem. The proof uses automata-theoretic techniques. This key result extends, by means of model-theoretic interpretations, to show decidability of the boundedness problem for MSO and guarded second-order logic (GSO) over the classes of structures of fixed finite tree-width. Further model-theoretic transfer arguments allow us to derive major known decidability results for boundedness for fragments of first-order logic as well as new ones

The Tail-Recursive Fragment of Timed Recursive CTL

Timed Recursive CTL (TRCTL) was recently proposed as a merger of two extensions of the well-known branching-time logic CTL: Timed CTL on one hand is interpreted over real-time systems like timed automata, and Recursive CTL (RecCTL) on the other hand obtains high expressiveness through the introduction of a recursion operator. Model checking for the resulting logic is known to be 2-EXPTIME-complete. The aim of this paper is to investigate the possibility to obtain a fragment of lower complexity without losing too much expressive power. It is obtained by a syntactic property called "tail-recursiveness" that restricts the way that recursive formulas can be built. This restriction is known to decrease the complexity of model checking by half an exponential in the untimed setting. We show that this also works in the real-time world: model checking for the tail-recursive fragment of TRCTL is EXPSPACE-complete. The upper bound is obtained by a standard untiming construction via region graphs, and rests on the known complexity of tail-recursive fragments of higher-order modal logics. The lower bound is established by a reduction from a suitable tiling problem

Subshifts as Models for MSO Logic

We study the Monadic Second Order (MSO) Hierarchy over colourings of the discrete plane, and draw links between classes of formula and classes of subshifts. We give a characterization of existential MSO in terms of projections of tilings, and of universal sentences in terms of combinations of ''pattern counting'' subshifts. Conversely, we characterise logic fragments corresponding to various classes of subshifts (subshifts of finite type, sofic subshifts, all subshifts). Finally, we show by a separation result how the situation here is different from the case of tiling pictures studied earlier by Giammarresi et al

Sanakielet ja lokaalisuus

In this master's thesis we study the generalization of word languages into multi-dimensional arrays of letters i.e picture languages. Our main interest is the class of recognizable picture languages which has many properties in common with the robust class of regular word languages. After surveying the basic properties of picture languages, we present a logical characterization of recognizable picture languages—a generalization of Büchi's theorem of word languages into pictures, namely that the class of recognizable picture languages is the one recognized by existential monadic second-order logic. The proof presented is a recent one that makes the relation between tilings and logic clear in the proof. By way of the proof we also study the locality of the model theory of picture structures through logical locality obtained by normalization of EMSO on those structures. A continuing theme in the work is also to compare automata and recognizability between word and picture languages. In the fourth section we briefly look at topics related to computativity and computational complexity of recognizable picture languages