Related papers: On Canonical Forms of Complete Problems via First-…
In this work we continue the syntactic study of completeness that began with the works of Immerman and Medina. In particular, we take a conjecture raised by Medina in his dissertation that says if a conjunction of a second-order and a…
We systematically investigate the complexity of model checking the existential positive fragment of first-order logic. In particular, for a set of existential positive sentences, we consider model checking where the sentence is restricted…
The objective of this article is to formalize the definition of NP problems. We construct a mathematical model of discrete problems as independence systems with weighted elements. We introduce two auxiliary sets that characterize the…
We describe simple algebraic and combinatorial characterisations of finite relational core structures admitting finitely many obstructions. As a consequence, we show that it is decidable to determine whether a constraint satisfaction…
By Fagin's Theorem, NP contains precisely those problems that can be described by formulas starting with an existential second-order quantifier, followed by only first-order quantifiers (ESO formulas). Subsequent research refined this…
This paper presents the following results on sets that are complete for NP. 1. If there is a problem in NP that requires exponential time at almost all lengths, then every many-one NP-complete set is complete under length-increasing…
We present in this paper a general algorithm for solving first-order formulas in particular theories called "decomposable theories". First of all, using special quantifiers, we give a formal characterization of decomposable theories and…
We study the problem of checking whether an existential sentence (that is, a first-order sentence in prefix form built using existential quantifiers and all Boolean connectives) is true in a finite partially ordered set (in short, a poset).…
A choice of first-order variables for the characteristic problem of the linearized Einstein equations is found which casts the system into manifestly well-posed form. The concept of well-posedness for characteristic problems invoked is that…
We try to understand complete types over a somewhat saturated model of a complete first order theory which is dependent (previously called NIP), by "decomposition theorems for such types". Our thesis is that the picture of dependent theory…
Fagin defined the class $NP$ by the means of Existential Second-Order logic. Feder and Vardi expressed it (up to polynomial equivalence) by special fragments of Existential Second-Order logic (SNP), while the authors used forbidden expanded…
For fragments L of first-order logic (FO) with counting quantifiers, we consider the definability problem, which asks whether a given L-formula can be equivalently expressed by a formula in some fragment of L without counting, and the more…
The classes stable, simple and NSOP$_1$ in the stability hierarchy for first-order theories can be characterised by the existence of a certain independence relation. For each of them there is a canonicity theorem: there can be at most one…
We give several characterizations of when a complete first-order theory $T$ is monadically NIP, i.e. when expansions of $T$ by arbitrary unary predicates do not have the independence property. The central characterization is a condition on…
The partition problem is a well-known basic NP-complete problem. We mainly consider the optimization version of it in this paper. The problem has been investigated from various perspectives for a long time and can be solved efficiently in…
We study descriptive complexity of counting complexity classes in the range from #P to #$\cdot$NP. A corollary of Fagin's characterization of NP by existential second-order logic is that #P can be logically described as the class of…
The fixed-template constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) can be seen as the problem of deciding whether a given primitive positive first-order sentence is true in a fixed structure (also called model). We study a class of problems that…
Monadic decomposability is a notion of variable independence, which asks whether a given formula in a first-order theory is expressible as a Boolean combination of monadic predicates in the theory. Recently, Veanes et al. showed the…
We study the complexity of evaluating positive equality-free sentences of first-order (FO) logic over a fixed, finite structure B. This may be seen as a natural generalisation of the non-uniform quantified constraint satisfaction problem…
Many natural decision problems can be formulated as constraint satisfaction problems for reducts $\mathbb{A}$ of finitely bounded homogeneous structures. This class of problems is a large generalisation of the class of CSPs over finite…