Undecidable propositional bimodal logics and one-variable first-order linear temporal logics with counting

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that certain extensions of one-variable first-order temporal logics with counting are highly undecidable over most linear orders, using bimodal logic frameworks and counter machine reductions.

Contribution

It introduces new undecidability results for extended one-variable first-order temporal logics with counting, analyzed through bimodal logic models and counter machine reductions.

Findings

Most extensions are undecidable over linear orders.

Bimodal logics with linear and difference relations are also undecidable.

New examples of finitely axiomatisable but Kripke incomplete bimodal logics.

Abstract

First-order temporal logics are notorious for their bad computational behaviour. It is known that even the two-variable monadic fragment is highly undecidable over various linear timelines, and over branching time even one-variable fragments might be undecidable. However, there have been several attempts on finding well-behaved fragments of first-order temporal logics and related temporal description logics, mostly either by restricting the available quantifier patterns, or considering sub-Boolean languages. Here we analyse seemingly `mild' extensions of decidable one-variable fragments with counting capabilities, interpreted in models with constant, decreasing, and expanding first-order domains. We show that over most classes of linear orders these logics are (sometimes highly) undecidable, even without constant and function symbols, and with the sole temporal operator `eventually'. We establish connections with bimodal logics over 2D product structures having linear and `difference' (inequality) component relations, and prove our results in this bimodal setting. We show a general result saying that satisfiability over many classes of bimodal models with commuting linear and difference relations is undecidable. As a by-product, we also obtain new examples of finitely axiomatisable but Kripke incomplete bimodal logics. Our results generalise similar lower bounds on bimodal logics over products of two linear relations, and our proof methods are quite different from the proofs of these results. Unlike previous proofs that first `diagonally encode' an infinite grid, and then use reductions of tiling or Turing machine problems, here we make direct use of the grid-like structure of product frames and obtain undecidability by reductions of counter (Minsky) machine problems.