We consider the two-variable fragment FO2[<] of first-order logic over finite words. Numerous characterizations of this class are known. Therien and Wilke have shown that it is decidable whether a given regular language is definable in FO2[<]. From a practical point of view, as shown by Weis, FO2[<] is interesting since its satisfiability problem is in NP. Restricting the number of quantifier alternations yields an infinite hierarchy inside the class of FO2[<]-definable languages. We show that each level of this hierarchy is decidable. For this purpose, we relate each level of the hierarchy with a decidable variety of finite monoids. Our result implies that there are many different ways of climbing up the FO2[<]-quantifier alternation hierarchy: deterministic and co-deterministic products, Mal'cev products with definite and reverse definite semigroups, iterated block products with J-trivial monoids, and some inductively defined omega-term identities. A combinatorial tool in the process of ascension is that of condensed rankers, a refinement of the rankers of Weis and Immerman and the turtle programs of Schwentick, Therien, and Vollmer.
@InProceedings{kufleitner_et_al:LIPIcs.CSL.2012.426, author = {Kufleitner, Manfred and Weil, Pascal}, title = {{The FO2 alternation hierarchy is decidable}}, booktitle = {Computer Science Logic (CSL'12) - 26th International Workshop/21st Annual Conference of the EACSL}, pages = {426--439}, series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}, ISBN = {978-3-939897-42-2}, ISSN = {1868-8969}, year = {2012}, volume = {16}, editor = {C\'{e}gielski, Patrick and Durand, Arnaud}, publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik}, address = {Dagstuhl, Germany}, URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CSL.2012.426}, URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-36888}, doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.CSL.2012.426}, annote = {Keywords: first-order logic, regular language, automata theory, semigroup, ranker} }
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