Characterization theorems for PDL and FO(TC)

Our main contributions can be divided in three parts: (1) Fixpoint extensions of first-order logic: we give a precise syntactic and semantic characterization of the relationship between $\mathrm{FO(TC^1)}$ and $\mathrm{FO(LFP)}$; (2) Automata and expressiveness on trees: we introduce a new class of parity automata which, on trees, captures the expressive power of $\mathrm{FO(TC^1)}$ and WCL (weak chain logic). The latter logic is a variant of MSO which quantifies over finite chains; and (3) Expressiveness modulo bisimilarity: we show that PDL is expressively equivalent to the bisimulation-invariant fragment of both $\mathrm{FO(TC^1)}$ and WCL. In particular, point (3) closes the open problems of the bisimulation-invariant characterizations of PDL, $\mathrm{FO(TC^1)}$ and WCL all at once.