cs.LOAug 2, 2026

Alternating-Time Temporal Logic with Mean-Payoff Guarantees

Authors: Muhammad Najib

Organizations: Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK

Abstract

Alternating-time temporal logic and its extensions provide several ways of combining strategic and quantitative reasoning. We study a particular combination: whether a coalition has a single strategy that enforces a temporal objective while guaranteeing given long-run mean-payoff thresholds. We introduce ATL_mp, an extension of ATL over weighted concurrent game structures in which each strategic modality carries a conjunctive mean-payoff constraint. The temporal and quantitative requirements must hold against every behaviour of the remaining agents, and the existence of such a strategy cannot in general be reduced to the two requirements considered separately. For one-dimensional constraints, model checking is 2EXPTIME-complete under both perfect-recall and finite-memory semantics, matching ATL*. For the pure quantitative fragment and fragments restricted to ATL or GR(1) temporal objectives, model checking has lower complexity. With multi-dimensional conjunctive constraints, model checking under finite-memory semantics remains 2EXPTIME-complete. We show that memoryless, finite-memory, and perfect-recall abilities form a strict hierarchy, while finite-memory strategies still achieve every threshold strictly below the perfect-recall supremum. We give tight linear upper and lower bounds on the required memory as a function of the denominator of the threshold, even when the game and temporal monitor are fixed. We give several examples of properties expressible in the logic, including temporal synthesis with performance guarantees and aggregate and multi-criteria objectives. We also relate the logic to cooperative rational verification, showing that it can express beneficial deviations from fixed payoff baselines, but not directly reproduce the standard ATL* encoding of the core for dichotomous preferences.

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