Certifying inexpressibility

Different classes of automata on infinite words have different expressive power. Deciding whether a given language L ⊆ Σ^ω can be expressed by an automaton of a desired class can be reduced to deciding a game between Prover and Refuter: in each turn of the game, Refuter provides a letter in Σ, and Prover responds with an annotation of the current state of the run (for example, in the case of Büchi automata, whether the state is accepting or rejecting, and in the case of parity automata, what the color of the state is). Prover wins if the sequence of annotations she generates is correct: it is an accepting run iff the word generated by Refuter is in L. We show how a winning strategy for Refuter can serve as a simple and easy-to-understand certificate to inexpressibility, and how it induces additional forms of certificates. Our framework handles all classes of deterministic automata, including ones with structural restrictions like weak automata. In addition, it can be used for refuting separation of two languages by an automaton of the desired class, and for finding automata that approximate L and belong to the desired class.