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We investigate the expressive power of higher-order recursion schemes (HORS) restricted to linear types. Two formalisms are considered: multiplicative additive HORS (MAHORS), which feature both linear function types and products, and multiplicative HORS (MHORS), based on linear function types only. For MAHORS, we establish an equi-expressivity result with a variant of tree-stack automata. Consequently, we can show that MAHORS are strictly more expressive than first-order HORS, that they are incomparable with second-order HORS, and that the associated branch languages lie at the third level of the collapsible pushdown hierarchy. In the multiplicative case, we show that MHORS are equivalent to a special kind of pushdown automata. It follows that any MHORS can be translated to an equivalent first-order MHORS in polynomial time. Further, we show that MHORS generate regular trees and can be translated to equivalent order-0 HORS in exponential time. Consequently, MHORS turn out to have the same expressive power as 0-HORS but they can be exponentially more concise. Our results are obtained through a combination of techniques from game semantics, the geometry of interaction and automata theory.
@InProceedings{clairambault_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2019.50,
author = {Clairambault, Pierre and Murawski, Andrzej S.},
title = {{On the Expressivity of Linear Recursion Schemes}},
booktitle = {44th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2019)},
pages = {50:1--50:14},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-117-7},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2019},
volume = {138},
editor = {Rossmanith, Peter and Heggernes, Pinar and Katoen, Joost-Pieter},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2019.50},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-109945},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2019.50},
annote = {Keywords: higher-order recursion schemes, linear logic, game semantics, geometry of interaction}
}