International audienceWe introduce the class of Rigid Tree Automata (RTA), an extension of standard bottom-up automata on ranked trees with distinguished states called rigid. Rigid states define a restriction on the computation of RTA on trees: RTA can test for equality in subtrees reaching the same rigid state. RTA are able to perform local and global tests of equality between subtrees, non-linear tree pattern matching, and restricted disequality tests as well. Properties like determinism, boolean closure, and several decision problems are studied in detail. In particular, the emptiness problem is shown decidable in linear time for RTA whereas membership of a given tree to the language of a given RTA is NP-complete. Our main result is the decidability of whether a given tree belongs to the rewrite closure of a RTA language under a restricted family of term rewriting systems, whereas this closure is not a RTA language. This result, one of the first on rewrite closure of languages of tree automata with constraints, is enabling the extension of model checking procedures based on finite tree automata techniques. Finally, a comparison of RTA with several classes of tree automata with local and global equality tests, and with dag automata is also provided

Abstract-We define tree automata with global constraints (TAGC), generalizing the class of tree automata with global equality and disequality constraints [1] (TAGED). TAGC can test for equality and disequality between subterms whose positions are defined by the states reached during a computation. In particular, TAGC can check that all the subterms reaching a given state are distinct. This constraint is related to monadic key constraints for XML documents, meaning that every two distinct positions of a given type have different values.We prove decidability of the emptiness problem for TAGC. This solves, in particular, the open question of decidability of emptiness for TAGED. We further extend our result by allowing global arithmetic constraints for counting the number of occurrences of some state or the number of different subterms reaching some state during a computation. We also allow local equality and disequality tests between sibling positions and the extension to unranked ordered trees. As a consequence of our results for TAGC, we prove the decidability of a fragment of the monadic second order logic on trees extended with predicates for equality and disequality between subtrees, and cardinality.

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Abstract. We define a class of ranked tree automata TABG generalizing both the tree automata with local tests between brothers of Bogaert and Tison (1992) and with global equality and disequality constraints (TAGED) of Filiot et al. (2007). TABG can test for equality and disequality modulo a given flat equational theory between brother subterms and between subterms whose positions are defined by the states reached during a computation. In particular, TABG can check that all the subterms reaching a given state are distinct. This constraint is related to monadic key constraints for XML documents, meaning that every two distinct positions of a given type have different values.We prove decidability of the emptiness problem for TABG. This solves, in particular, the open question of the decidability of emptiness for TAGED. We further extend our result by allowing global arithmetic constraints for counting the number of occurrences of some state or the number of different equivalence classes of subterms (modulo a given flat equational theory) reaching some state during a computation. We also adapt the model to unranked ordered terms. As a consequence of our results for TABG, we prove the decidability of a fragment of the monadic second order logic on trees extended with predicates for equality and disequality between subtrees, and cardinality. ACM CCS: [Theory of computation]:Formal languages and automata theory-Tree languages; Logic-Higher order logic.