Cost Automata, Safe Schemes, and Downward Closures

Higher-order recursion schemes are an expressive formalism used to define languages of possibly infinite ranked trees. They extend regular and context-free grammars, and are equivalent to simply typed ?Y-calculus and collapsible pushdown automata. In this work we prove, under a syntactical constraint called safety, decidability of the model-checking problem for recursion schemes against properties defined by alternating B-automata, an extension of alternating parity automata for infinite trees with a boundedness acceptance condition. We then exploit this result to show how to compute downward closures of languages of finite trees recognized by safe recursion schemes

An interpretation of the Sigma-2 fragment of classical Analysis in System T

We show that it is possible to define a realizability interpretation for the $\Sigma_2$-fragment of classical Analysis using G\"odel's System T only. This supplements a previous result of Schwichtenberg regarding bar recursion at types 0 and 1 by showing how to avoid using bar recursion altogether. Our result is proved via a conservative extension of System T with an operator for composable continuations from the theory of programming languages due to Danvy and Filinski. The fragment of Analysis is therefore essentially constructive, even in presence of the full Axiom of Choice schema: Weak Church's Rule holds of it in spite of the fact that it is strong enough to refute the formal arithmetical version of Church's Thesis

A Direct Version of Veldman's Proof of Open Induction on Cantor Space via Delimited Control Operators

First, we reconstruct Wim Veldman's result that Open Induction on Cantor space can be derived from Double-negation Shift and Markov's Principle. In doing this, we notice that one has to use a countable choice axiom in the proof and that Markov's Principle is replaceable by slightly strengthening the Double-negation Shift schema. We show that this strengthened version of Double-negation Shift can nonetheless be derived in a constructive intermediate logic based on delimited control operators, extended with axioms for higher-type Heyting Arithmetic. We formalize the argument and thus obtain a proof term that directly derives Open Induction on Cantor space by the shift and reset delimited control operators of Danvy and Filinski

Recursion Schemes and the WMSO+U Logic

We study the weak MSO logic extended by the unbounding quantifier (WMSO+U), expressing the fact that there exist arbitrarily large finite sets satisfying a given property. We prove that it is decidable whether the tree generated by a given higher-order recursion scheme satisfies a given sentence of WMSO+U

Higher-Order Nonemptiness Step by Step

We show a new simple algorithm that checks whether a given higher-order grammar generates a nonempty language of trees. The algorithm amounts to a procedure that transforms a grammar of order n to a grammar of order n-1, preserving nonemptiness, and increasing the size only exponentially. After repeating the procedure n times, we obtain a grammar of order 0, whose nonemptiness can be easily checked. Since the size grows exponentially at each step, the overall complexity is n-EXPTIME, which is known to be optimal. More precisely, the transformation (and hence the whole algorithm) is linear in the size of the grammar, assuming that the arity of employed nonterminals is bounded by a constant. The same algorithm allows to check whether an infinite tree generated by a higher-order recursion scheme is accepted by an alternating safety (or reachability) automaton, because this question can be reduced to the nonemptiness problem by taking a product of the recursion scheme with the automaton. A proof of correctness of the algorithm is formalised in the proof assistant Coq. Our transformation is motivated by a similar transformation of Asada and Kobayashi (2020) changing a word grammar of order n to a tree grammar of order n-1. The step-by-step approach can be opposed to previous algorithms solving the nonemptiness problem "in one step", being compulsorily more complicated

Higher-Order Model Checking Step by Step

We show a new simple algorithm that solves the model-checking problem for recursion schemes: check whether the tree generated by a given higher-order recursion scheme is accepted by a given alternating parity automaton. The algorithm amounts to a procedure that transforms a recursion scheme of order n to a recursion scheme of order n-1, preserving acceptance, and increasing the size only exponentially. After repeating the procedure n times, we obtain a recursion scheme of order 0, for which the problem boils down to solving a finite parity game. Since the size grows exponentially at each step, the overall complexity is n-EXPTIME, which is known to be optimal. More precisely, the transformation is linear in the size of the recursion scheme, assuming that the arity of employed nonterminals and the size of the automaton are bounded by a constant; this results in an FPT algorithm for the model-checking problem. Our transformation is a generalization of a previous transformation of the author (2020), working for reachability automata in place of parity automata. The step-by-step approach can be opposed to previous algorithms solving the considered problem "in one step", being compulsorily more complicated

The number of clones determined by disjunctions of unary relations

We consider finitary relations (also known as crosses) that are definable via finite disjunctions of unary relations, i.e. subsets, taken from a fixed finite parameter set $\Gamma$. We prove that whenever $\Gamma$ contains at least one non-empty relation distinct from the full carrier set, there is a countably infinite number of polymorphism clones determined by relations that are disjunctively definable from $\Gamma$. Finally, we extend our result to finitely related polymorphism clones and countably infinite sets $\Gamma$.Comment: manuscript to be published in Theory of Computing System

Cost Automata, Safe Schemes, and Downward Closures

Higher-order recursion schemes are an expressive formalism used to define languages of possibly infinite ranked trees. They extend regular and context-free grammars, and are equivalent to simply typed $\lambda Y$-calculus and collapsible pushdown automata. In this work we prove, under a syntactical constraint called safety, decidability of the model-checking problem for recursion schemes against properties defined by alternating B-automata, an extension of alternating parity automata for infinite trees with a boundedness acceptance condition. We then exploit this result to show how to compute downward closures of languages of finite trees recognized by safe recursion schemes.Comment: accepted at ICALP'2