Deterministic Logics for UL

Abstract: The class of Unambiguous Star-Free Regular Languages (UL) was defined by Schutzenberger as the class of languages defined by Unambiguous Polynomials. UL has been variously characterized (over finite words) by logics such as TL[X_a,Y_a], UITL, TL[F,P], FO2[<], the variety DA of monoids, as well as partially-ordered two-way DFA (po2DFA). We revisit this language class with emphasis on notion of unambiguity and develop on the concept of Deterministic Logics for UL. The formulas of deterministic logics uniquely parse a word in order to evaluate satisfaction. We show that several deterministic logics robustly characterize UL. Moreover, we derive constructive reductions from these logics to the po2DFA automata. These reductions also allow us to show NP-complete satisfaction complexity for the deterministic logics considered. Logics such as TL[F,P], FO2[<] are not deterministic and have been shown to characterize UL using algebraic methods. However there has been no known constructive reduction from these logics to po2DFA. We use deterministic logics to bridge this gap. The language-equivalent po2DFA for a given TL[F,P] formula is constructed and we analyze its size relative to the size of the TL[F,P] formula. This is an efficient reduction which gives an alternate proof to NP-complete satisfiability complexity of TL[F,P] formulas.