Weak MSO: Automata and Expressiveness Modulo Bisimilarity

We prove that the bisimulation-invariant fragment of weak monadic second-order logic (WMSO) is equivalent to the fragment of the modal $\mu$-calculus where the application of the least fixpoint operator $\mu p.\varphi$ is restricted to formulas $\varphi$ that are continuous in $p$. Our proof is automata-theoretic in nature; in particular, we introduce a class of automata characterizing the expressive power of WMSO over tree models of arbitrary branching degree. The transition map of these automata is defined in terms of a logic $\mathrm{FOE}_1^\infty$ that is the extension of first-order logic with a generalized quantifier $\exists^\infty$, where $\exists^\infty x. \phi$ means that there are infinitely many objects satisfying $\phi$. An important part of our work consists of a model-theoretic analysis of $\mathrm{FOE}_1^\infty$.Comment: Technical Report, 57 page

Weighted Automata and Logics for Infinite Nested Words

Nested words introduced by Alur and Madhusudan are used to capture structures with both linear and hierarchical order, e.g. XML documents, without losing valuable closure properties. Furthermore, Alur and Madhusudan introduced automata and equivalent logics for both finite and infinite nested words, thus extending B\"uchi's theorem to nested words. Recently, average and discounted computations of weights in quantitative systems found much interest. Here, we will introduce and investigate weighted automata models and weighted MSO logics for infinite nested words. As weight structures we consider valuation monoids which incorporate average and discounted computations of weights as well as the classical semirings. We show that under suitable assumptions, two resp. three fragments of our weighted logics can be transformed into each other. Moreover, we show that the logic fragments have the same expressive power as weighted nested word automata.Comment: LATA 2014, 12 page

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

One-Tape Turing Machine Variants and Language Recognition

We present two restricted versions of one-tape Turing machines. Both characterize the class of context-free languages. In the first version, proposed by Hibbard in 1967 and called limited automata, each tape cell can be rewritten only in the first $d$ visits, for a fixed constant $d\geq 2$. Furthermore, for $d=2$ deterministic limited automata are equivalent to deterministic pushdown automata, namely they characterize deterministic context-free languages. Further restricting the possible operations, we consider strongly limited automata. These models still characterize context-free languages. However, the deterministic version is less powerful than the deterministic version of limited automata. In fact, there exist deterministic context-free languages that are not accepted by any deterministic strongly limited automaton.Comment: 20 pages. This article will appear in the Complexity Theory Column of the September 2015 issue of SIGACT New

Unbounded-error quantum computation with small space bounds

We prove the following facts about the language recognition power of quantum Turing machines (QTMs) in the unbounded error setting: QTMs are strictly more powerful than probabilistic Turing machines for any common space bound $s$ satisfying $s(n)=o(\log \log n)$. For "one-way" Turing machines, where the input tape head is not allowed to move left, the above result holds for $s(n)=o(\log n)$. We also give a characterization for the class of languages recognized with unbounded error by real-time quantum finite automata (QFAs) with restricted measurements. It turns out that these automata are equal in power to their probabilistic counterparts, and this fact does not change when the QFA model is augmented to allow general measurements and mixed states. Unlike the case with classical finite automata, when the QFA tape head is allowed to remain stationary in some steps, more languages become recognizable. We define and use a QTM model that generalizes the other variants introduced earlier in the study of quantum space complexity.Comment: A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the Fourth International Computer Science Symposium in Russia, pages 356--367, 200

Deterministic Automata for Unordered Trees

Automata for unordered unranked trees are relevant for defining schemas and queries for data trees in Json or Xml format. While the existing notions are well-investigated concerning expressiveness, they all lack a proper notion of determinism, which makes it difficult to distinguish subclasses of automata for which problems such as inclusion, equivalence, and minimization can be solved efficiently. In this paper, we propose and investigate different notions of "horizontal determinism", starting from automata for unranked trees in which the horizontal evaluation is performed by finite state automata. We show that a restriction to confluent horizontal evaluation leads to polynomial-time emptiness and universality, but still suffers from coNP-completeness of the emptiness of binary intersections. Finally, efficient algorithms can be obtained by imposing an order of horizontal evaluation globally for all automata in the class. Depending on the choice of the order, we obtain different classes of automata, each of which has the same expressiveness as CMso.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2014, arXiv:1408.556

An Application of the Feferman-Vaught Theorem to Automata and Logics for<br> Words over an Infinite Alphabet

We show that a special case of the Feferman-Vaught composition theorem gives rise to a natural notion of automata for finite words over an infinite alphabet, with good closure and decidability properties, as well as several logical characterizations. We also consider a slight extension of the Feferman-Vaught formalism which allows to express more relations between component values (such as equality), and prove related decidability results. From this result we get new classes of decidable logics for words over an infinite alphabet.Comment: 24 page