An effective characterization of the alternation hierarchy in two-variable logic

We characterize the languages in the individual levels of the quantifier alternation hierarchy of first-order logic with two variables by identities. This implies decidability of the individual levels. More generally we show that the two-sided semidirect product of a decidable variety with the variety J is decidable

The half-levels of the FO2 alternation hierarchy

© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York. The alternation hierarchy in two-variable first-order logic FO 2 [ < ] over words was shown to be decidable by Kufleitner and Weil, and independently by Krebs and Straubing. We consider a similar hierarchy, reminiscent of the half levels of the dot-depth hierarchy or the Straubing-Thérien hierarchy. The fragment Σm2 of FO 2 is defined by disallowing universal quantifiers and having at most m−1 nested negations. The Boolean closure of Σm2 yields the m th level of the FO 2 -alternation hierarchy. We give an effective characterization of Σm2, i.e., for every integer m one can decide whether a given regular language is definable in Σm2. Among other techniques, the proof relies on an extension of block products to ordered monoids

Equidivisible pseudovarieties of semigroups

We give a complete characterization of pseudovarieties of semigroups whose finitely generated relatively free profinite semigroups are equidivisible. Besides the pseudovarieties of completely simple semigroups, they are precisely the pseudovarieties that are closed under Mal'cev product on the left by the pseudovariety of locally trivial semigroups. A further characterization which turns out to be instrumental is as the non-completely simple pseudovarieties that are closed under two-sided Karnofsky-Rhodes expansion

On a Product of Finite Monoids

In this paper, for each positive integer m, we associate with a finite monoid S0 and m finite commutative monoids S1,…, Sm, a product &amp;#x25CAm(Sm,…, S1, S0). We give a representation of the free objects in the pseudovariety &amp;#x25CAm(Wm,…, W1, W0) generated by these (m + 1)-ary products where Si &amp;#x2208 Wi for all 0 &amp;#x2264 i &amp;#x2264 m. We then give, in particular, a criterion to determine when an identity holds in &amp;#x25CAm(J1,…, J1, J1) with the help of a version of the Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé game (J1 denotes the pseudovariety of all semilattice monoids). The union &amp;#x222Am&gt;0&amp;#x25CAm (J1,…, J1, J1) turns out to be the second level of the Straubing’s dot-depth hierarchy of aperiodic monoids

Block products and nesting negations in FO2

The alternation hierarchy in two-variable first-order logic FO 2 [∈ < ∈] over words was recently shown to be decidable by Kufleitner and Weil, and independently by Krebs and Straubing. In this paper we consider a similar hierarchy, reminiscent of the half levels of the dot-depth hierarchy or the Straubing-Thérien hierarchy. The fragment of FO 2 is defined by disallowing universal quantifiers and having at most m∈-∈1 nested negations. One can view as the formulas in FO 2 which have at most m blocks of quantifiers on every path of their parse tree, and the first block is existential. Thus, the m th level of the FO 2 -alternation hierarchy is the Boolean closure of. We give an effective characterization of, i.e., for every integer m one can decide whether a given regular language is definable by a two-variable first-order formula with negation nesting depth at most m. More precisely, for every m we give ω-terms U m and V m such that an FO 2 -definable language is in if and only if its ordered syntactic monoid satisfies the identity U m ∈V m. Among other techniques, the proof relies on an extension of block products to ordered monoids. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

Trees, Congruences and Varieties of Finite Semigroups

A classification scheme for regular languages or finite semigroups was proposed by Pin through tree hierarchies, a scheme related to the concatenation product, an operation on languages, and to the Schützenberger product, an operation on semigroups. Starting with a variety of finite semigroups (or pseudovariety of semigroups) V, a pseudovariety of semigroups &amp;#x25CAu(V) is associated to each tree u. In this paper, starting with the congruence &amp;#x03B3A generating a locally finite pseudovariety of semigroups V for the finite alphabet A, we construct a congruence &amp;#x2261u (&amp;#x03B3A) in such a way to generate &amp;#x25CAu(V) for A. We give partial results on the problem of comparing the congruences &amp;#x2261u (&amp;#x03B3A) or the pseudovarieties &amp;#x25CAu(V). We also propose case studies of associating trees to semidirect or two-sided semidirect products of locally finite pseudovarieties

Algebraic Characterization of the Alternation Hierarchy in FO^2[<] on Finite Words

We give an algebraic characterization of the quantifier alternation hierarchy in first-order two-variable logic on finite words. As a result, we obtain a new proof that this hierarchy is strict. We also show that the first two levels of the hierarchy have decidable membership problems, and conjecture an algebraic decision procedure for the other levels