Local LTL with past constants is expressively complete for Mazurkiewicz traces

Abstract

To obtain an expressively complete linear-time temporal logic (LTL) over Mazurkiewicz traces that is computationally tractable, we need to intepret formulas locally, at individual events in a trace, rather than globally, at configurations. Such local logics necessarily require past modalities, in contrast to the classical setting of LTL over sequences. Earlier attempts at defining expressively complete local logics have used very general past modalities as well as filters (side-conditions) that “look sideways” and talk of concurrent events. In this paper, we show that it is possible to use unfiltered future modalities in conjunction with past constants and still obtain a logic that is expressively complete over traces.