Safraless decision procedures

Orna Kupferman*, Moshe Y. Vardi

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

189 Scopus citations

Abstract

The automata-theoretic approach is one of the most fundamental approaches to developing decision procedures in mathematical logics. To decide whether a formula in a logic with the tree-model property is satisfiable, one constructs an automaton that accepts all (or enough) tree models of the formula and then checks that the language of this automaton is nonempty. The standard approach translates formulas into alternating parity tree automata, which are then translated, via Safra'sdeterminization construction, into nondeterministic parity automata. This approach is not amenable to implementation because of the difficulty of implementing Safra's construction and the nonemptiness test for nondeterministic parity tree automata. In this paper we offer an alternative to the standard automata-theoretic approach. The crux of our approach is avoiding the use of Safra's construction and of nondeterministic parity tree automata. Our approach goes instead via universal co-Büchi tree automata and nondeterministic Bücht tree automata. Our translations are significantly simpler than the standard approach, less difficult to implement, and have practical advantages like being amenable to optimizations and a symbolic implementation. We also show that our approach yields better complexity bounds.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 46th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, FOCS 2005
Pages531-540
Number of pages10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2005
Event46th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, FOCS 2005 - Pittsburgh, PA, United States
Duration: 23 Oct 200525 Oct 2005

Publication series

NameProceedings - Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, FOCS
Volume2005
ISSN (Print)0272-5428

Conference

Conference46th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, FOCS 2005
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPittsburgh, PA
Period23/10/0525/10/05

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Safraless decision procedures'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this