On the expressive power of temporal logic for finite words

We study the expressive power of linear propositional temporal logic interpreted on finite sequences or words. We first give a transparent proof of the fact that a formal language is expressible in this logic if and only if its syntactic semigroup is finite and aperiodic. This gives an effective algorithm to decide whether a given rational language is expressible. Our main result states a similar condition for the "restricted" temporal logic (RTL), obtained by discarding the until operator. A formal language is RTL-expressible if and only if its syntactic semigroup is finite and satisfies a certain simple algebraic condition. This leads to a polynomial time algorithm to check whether the formal language accepted by an n-state deterministic automaton is RTL-expressible