Thomas Tuerk, Klaus Schneider

• There is a well known relationship between alternating automata on finite words and symbolically represented nondeterministic automata on finite words. This relationship is of practical relevance because it allows to combine the advantages of alternating and symbolically represented nondeterministic automata on finite words. However, for infinite words the situation is unclear. Therefore, this work investigates the relationship between alternating omega-automata and symbolically represented nondeterministic omega-automata. Thereby, we identify classes of alternating omega-automata that are as expressive as safety, liveness and deterministic prefix automata, respectively. Moreover, some very simple symbolic nondeterminisation procedures are developed for the classes corresponding to safety and liveness properties.