Past, Present, and Infinite Future

Abstract

I was supposed to deliver one of the speeches at Wolfgang Thomas\u27s retirement ceremony. Wolfgang had called me on the phone earlier and posed some questions about temporal logic, but I hadn\u27t had good answers at the time. What I decided to do at the ceremony was to take up the conversation again and show how it could have evolved if only I had put more effort into answering his questions. Here is the imaginary conversation with Wolfgang. The contributions are (1) the first direct translation from counter-free omega-automata into future temporal formulas, (2) a definition of bimachines for omega-words, (3) a translation from arbitrary temporal formulas (including both, future and past operators) into counter-free omega-bimachines, and (4) an automata-based proof of separation: every arbitrary temporal formula is equivalent to a boolean combination of pure future, present, and pure past formulas when interpreted in omega-words