English

Second order logic on random rooted trees

Probability 2017-06-21 v1 Logic

Abstract

We address questions of logic and expressibility in the context of random rooted trees. Infiniteness of a rooted tree is not expressible as a first order sentence, but is expressible as an existential monadic second order sentence (EMSO). On the other hand, finiteness is not expressible as an EMSO. For a broad class of random tree models, including Galton-Watson trees with offspring distributions that have full support, we prove the stronger statement that finiteness does not agree up to a null set with any EMSO. We construct a finite tree and a non-null set of infinite trees that cannot be distinguished from each other by any EMSO of given parameters. This is proved via set-pebble Ehrenfeucht games (where an initial colouring round is followed by a given number of pebble rounds).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.06192,
  title  = {Second order logic on random rooted trees},
  author = {Alexander E. Holroyd and Avi Levy and Moumanti Podder and Joel Spencer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.06192},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

24 pages, 2 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:23:20.569Z