589 research outputs found
Automatic structures of bounded degree revisited
The first-order theory of a string automatic structure is known to be
decidable, but there are examples of string automatic structures with
nonelementary first-order theories. We prove that the first-order theory of a
string automatic structure of bounded degree is decidable in doubly exponential
space (for injective automatic presentations, this holds even uniformly). This
result is shown to be optimal since we also present a string automatic
structure of bounded degree whose first-order theory is hard for 2EXPSPACE. We
prove similar results also for tree automatic structures. These findings close
the gaps left open in a previous paper of the second author by improving both,
the lower and the upper bounds.Comment: 26 page
Transforming structures by set interpretations
We consider a new kind of interpretation over relational structures: finite
sets interpretations. Those interpretations are defined by weak monadic
second-order (WMSO) formulas with free set variables. They transform a given
structure into a structure with a domain consisting of finite sets of elements
of the orignal structure. The definition of these interpretations directly
implies that they send structures with a decidable WMSO theory to structures
with a decidable first-order theory. In this paper, we investigate the
expressive power of such interpretations applied to infinite deterministic
trees. The results can be used in the study of automatic and tree-automatic
structures.Comment: 36 page
Tree-Automatic Well-Founded Trees
We investigate tree-automatic well-founded trees. Using Delhomme's
decomposition technique for tree-automatic structures, we show that the
(ordinal) rank of a tree-automatic well-founded tree is strictly below
omega^omega. Moreover, we make a step towards proving that the ranks of
tree-automatic well-founded partial orders are bounded by omega^omega^omega: we
prove this bound for what we call upwards linear partial orders. As an
application of our result, we show that the isomorphism problem for
tree-automatic well-founded trees is complete for level Delta^0_{omega^omega}
of the hyperarithmetical hierarchy with respect to Turing-reductions.Comment: Will appear in Logical Methods of Computer Scienc
A Structural Approach to Reversible Computation
Reversibility is a key issue in the interface between computation and
physics, and of growing importance as miniaturization progresses towards its
physical limits. Most foundational work on reversible computing to date has
focussed on simulations of low-level machine models. By contrast, we develop a
more structural approach. We show how high-level functional programs can be
mapped compositionally (i.e. in a syntax-directed fashion) into a simple kind
of automata which are immediately seen to be reversible. The size of the
automaton is linear in the size of the functional term. In mathematical terms,
we are building a concrete model of functional computation. This construction
stems directly from ideas arising in Geometry of Interaction and Linear
Logic---but can be understood without any knowledge of these topics. In fact,
it serves as an excellent introduction to them. At the same time, an
interesting logical delineation between reversible and irreversible forms of
computation emerges from our analysis.Comment: 30 pages, appeared in Theoretical Computer Scienc
On the Complexity of Infinite Advice Strings
We investigate in this paper a notion of comparison between infinite strings. In a general way, if M is a computation model (e.g. Turing machines) and C a class of objects (e.g. languages), the complexity of an infinite word alpha can be measured with respect to the amount of objects from C that are presentable with machines from M using alpha as an oracle.
In our case, the model M is finite automata and the objects C are either recognized languages or presentable structures, known respectively as advice regular languages and advice automatic structures. This leads to several different classifications of infinite words that are studied in detail; we also derive logical and computational equivalent measures. Our main results explore the connections between classes of advice automatic structures, MSO-transductions and two-way transducers. They suggest a closer study of the resulting hierarchy over infinite words
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