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Fixpoints, games and the difference hierarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2003

Julian C. Bradfield*
Affiliation:
LFCS, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK; jcb@inf.ed.ac.uk.
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Abstract

Drawing on an analogy with temporal fixpoint logic, we relate the arithmetic fixpoint definable sets to the winning positions of certain games, namely games whose winning conditions lie in the difference hierarchy over $\Sigma^0_2$. This both provides a simple characterization of the fixpoint hierarchy, and refines existing results on the power of the game quantifier in descriptive set theory. We raise the problem of transfinite fixpoint hierarchies.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, 2003

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