900 research outputs found
On factorisation forests
The theorem of factorisation forests shows the existence of nested
factorisations -- a la Ramsey -- for finite words. This theorem has important
applications in semigroup theory, and beyond. The purpose of this paper is to
illustrate the importance of this approach in the context of automata over
infinite words and trees. We extend the theorem of factorisation forest in two
directions: we show that it is still valid for any word indexed by a linear
ordering; and we show that it admits a deterministic variant for words indexed
by well-orderings. A byproduct of this work is also an improvement on the known
bounds for the original result. We apply the first variant for giving a
simplified proof of the closure under complementation of rational sets of words
indexed by countable scattered linear orderings. We apply the second variant in
the analysis of monadic second-order logic over trees, yielding new results on
monadic interpretations over trees. Consequences of it are new caracterisations
of prefix-recognizable structures and of the Caucal hierarchy.Comment: 27 page
On Decidability Properties of Local Sentences
Local (first order) sentences, introduced by Ressayre, enjoy very nice
decidability properties, following from some stretching theorems stating some
remarkable links between the finite and the infinite model theory of these
sentences. We prove here several additional results on local sentences. The
first one is a new decidability result in the case of local sentences whose
function symbols are at most unary: one can decide, for every regular cardinal
k whether a local sentence phi has a model of order type k. Secondly we show
that this result can not be extended to the general case. Assuming the
consistency of an inaccessible cardinal we prove that the set of local
sentences having a model of order type omega_2 is not determined by the
axiomatic system ZFC + GCH, where GCH is the generalized continuum hypothesi
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