English

Monadic second order finite satisfiability and unbounded tree-width

Logic in Computer Science 2016-04-19 v2

Abstract

The finite satisfiability problem of monadic second order logic is decidable only on classes of structures of bounded tree-width by the classic result of Seese (1991). We prove the following problem is decidable: Input: (i) A monadic second order logic sentence α\alpha, and (ii) a sentence β\beta in the two-variable fragment of first order logic extended with counting quantifiers. The vocabularies of α\alpha and β\beta may intersect. Output: Is there a finite structure which satisfies αβ\alpha\land\beta such that the restriction of the structure to the vocabulary of α\alpha has bounded tree-width? (The tree-width of the desired structure is not bounded.) As a consequence, we prove the decidability of the satisfiability problem by a finite structure of bounded tree-width of a logic extending monadic second order logic with linear cardinality constraints of the form X1++Xr<Y1++Ys|X_{1}|+\cdots+|X_{r}|<|Y_{1}|+\cdots+|Y_{s}|, where the XiX_{i} and YjY_{j} are monadic second order variables. We prove the decidability of a similar extension of WS1S.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1505.06622,
  title  = {Monadic second order finite satisfiability and unbounded tree-width},
  author = {Tomer Kotek and Helmut Veith and Florian Zuleger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.06622},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:40:48.958Z