Title
Recursive definitions and fixed-points on well-founded structures
Abstract
An expression such as @?x(P(x)@?@f(P)), where P occurs in @f(P), does not always define P. When such an expression implicitly definesP, in the sense of Beth (1953) [1] and Padoa (1900) [13], we call it a recursive definition. In the Least Fixed-Point Logic (LFP), we have theories where interesting relations can be recursively defined (Ebbinghaus, 1995 [4], Libkin, 2004 [12]). We will show that for some sorts of recursive definitions there are explicit definitions on sufficiently strong theories of LFP. It is known that LFP, restricted to finite models, does not have Beth's Definability Theorem (Gurevich, 1996 [7], Hodkinson, 1993 [8], Dawar, 1995 [3]). Beth's Definability Theorem states that, if a relation is implicitly defined, then there is an explicit definition for it. We will also give a proof that Beth's Definability Theorem fails for LFP without this finite model restriction. We will investigate fragments of LFP for which Beth's Definability Theorem holds, specifically theories whose models are well-founded structures.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1016/j.tcs.2011.01.028
Theor. Comput. Sci.
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Recursive definition,recursive definition,Fixed-Point Logic,Fixed-points,Definability Theorem,finite model,interesting relation,Recursive definitions,finite model restriction,well-founded structure,Beth’s definability theorem,strong theory,explicit definition,Definability Theorem state
Journal
412
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
37
Theoretical Computer Science
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
6
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Francicleber Martins Ferreira114.44
Ana Teresa Martins224.80