Flavors of quantifiers in hyperlogics

Hypertrace logic is a sorted first-order logic with separate sorts for time and execution traces. Its formulas specify hyperproperties, which are properties relating multiple traces. In this work, we extend hypertrace logic by introducing trace quantifiers that range over the set of all possible traces. In this extended logic, formulas can quantify over two kinds of trace variables: constrained trace variables, which range over a fixed set of traces defined by the model, and unconstrained trace variables, which can be assigned to any trace. In comparison, hyperlogics such as HyperLTL have only constrained trace quantifiers. We use hypertrace logic to study how different quantifier patterns affect the decidability of the satisfiability problem. We prove that hypertrace logic without constrained trace quantifiers is equivalent to monadic second-order logic of one successor (S1S), and therefore satisfiable, and that the trace-prefixed fragment (all trace quantifiers precede all time quantifiers) is equivalent to HyperQPTL. Moreover, we show that all hypertrace formulas where the only alternation between constrained trace quantifiers is from an existential to a universal quantifier are equisatisfiable to formulas without constraints on their trace variables and, therefore, decidable as well. Our framework allows us to study also time-prefixed hyperlogics, for which we provide new decidability and undecidability results.