Model theory of XPath on data trees. Part II: Binary bisimulation and definability

We introduce new notions of binary bisimulations, which relate two pairs of nodes of data trees. We show that over finitely branching data trees, these notions correspond to the idea of 'indistinguishability by means of path expressions'. We prove a characterization theorem, which describes when a first-order formula with two free variables is expressible in the downward fragment. We show definability and separation theorems, for classes of two-pointed data trees and in the context of path expressions.