Reachability Analysis of First-order Definable Pushdown Systems

We study pushdown systems where control states, stack alphabet, and transition relation, instead of being finite, are first-order definable in a fixed countably-infinite structure. We show that the reachability analysis can be addressed with the well-known saturation technique for the wide class of oligomorphic structures. Moreover, for the more restrictive homogeneous structures, we are able to give concrete complexity upper bounds. We show ample applicability of our technique by presenting several concrete examples of homogeneous structures, subsuming, with optimal complexity, known results from the literature. We show that infinitely many such examples of homogeneous structures can be obtained with the classical wreath product construction. 1998 ACM Subject Classification F.1.1 [Computation by Abstract Devices]: Models of Computation; F.2.2 [Nonnumerical Algorithms and Problems]: Computations on discrete structures; F.3.1 [Specifying and Verifying and Reasoning about Programs]: Mechanical verification; F.4.1 [Mathematical Logic]: Logic and constraint programming.