Marie Fortin ; Louwe B. Kuijer ; Patrick Totzke ; Martin Zimmermann - HyperLTL Satisfiability Is Highly Undecidable, HyperCTL$^*$ is Even Harder

lmcs:11608 - Logical Methods in Computer Science, January 10, 2025, Volume 21, Issue 1 - https://doi.org/10.46298/lmcs-21(1:3)2025
HyperLTL Satisfiability Is Highly Undecidable, HyperCTL$^*$ is Even HarderArticle

Authors: Marie Fortin ; Louwe B. Kuijer ; Patrick Totzke ; Martin Zimmermann

    Temporal logics for the specification of information-flow properties are able to express relations between multiple executions of a system. The two most important such logics are HyperLTL and HyperCTL*, which generalise LTL and CTL* by trace quantification. It is known that this expressiveness comes at a price, i.e. satisfiability is undecidable for both logics. In this paper we settle the exact complexity of these problems, showing that both are in fact highly undecidable: we prove that HyperLTL satisfiability is $\Sigma_1^1$-complete and HyperCTL* satisfiability is $\Sigma_1^2$-complete. These are significant increases over the previously known lower bounds and the first upper bounds. To prove $\Sigma_1^2$-membership for HyperCTL*, we prove that every satisfiable HyperCTL* sentence has a model that is equinumerous to the continuum, the first upper bound of this kind. We also prove this bound to be tight. Furthermore, we prove that both countable and finitely-branching satisfiability for HyperCTL* are as hard as truth in second-order arithmetic, i.e. still highly undecidable. Finally, we show that the membership problem for every level of the HyperLTL quantifier alternation hierarchy is $\Pi_1^1$-complete.


    Volume: Volume 21, Issue 1
    Published on: January 10, 2025
    Accepted on: December 11, 2024
    Submitted on: July 19, 2023
    Keywords: Computer Science - Logic in Computer Science

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