Related papers: Expressibility at the machine level versus structu…

We show that the maximum clique problem (decision version) can be expressed in existential second order (ESO) logic, where the first order part is a Horn formula in second-order quantified predicates. Without ordering, the first order part…

In this manuscript, assuming that Graedel's 1991 results are correct (which implies that bounds on the solution values for optimization problems can be expressed in existential second order logic where the first order part is universal…

Extensional ESO is a fragment of existential second-order logic (ESO) that captures the following family of problems. Given a fixed ESO sentence $\Psi$ and an input structure $\mathbb A$ the task if to decide whether there is an extension…

In this paper we study the expressive power of Horn-formulae in dependence logic and show that they can express NP-complete problems. Therefore we define an even smaller fragment D-Horn* and show that over finite successor structures it…

In order to prove that the P of problems is different to the NP class, we consider the satisfability problem of propositional calculus formulae, which is an NP-complete problem. It is shown that, for every search algorithm A, there is a set…

Descriptive complexity theory aims at inferring a problem's computational complexity from the syntactic complexity of its description. A cornerstone of this theory is Fagin's Theorem, by which a graph property is expressible in existential…

In Descriptive Complexity, there is a vast amount of literature on decision problems, and their classes such as \textbf{P, NP, L and NL}. ~ However, research on the descriptive complexity of optimisation problems has been limited.…

Here we deal with the logic of [GuSh 533], which tries to capture polynomial time (for finite models). There it is proved that the logic cannot say much on models with equality only. Here we prove that it cannot say much on models for which…

The expressiveness of propositional non-clausal (NC) formulas is exponentially richer than that of clausal formulas. Yet, clausal efficiency outperforms non-clausal one. Indeed, a major weakness of the latter is that, while Horn clausal…

We show that for any $i > 0$, it is decidable, given a regular language, whether it is expressible in the $\Sigma_i[<]$ fragment of first-order logic FO[<]. This settles a question open since 1971. Our main technical result relies on the…

It is shown that order-invariance of two-variable first-logic is decidable in the finite. This is an immediate consequence of a decision procedure obtained for the finite satisfiability problem for existential second-order logic with two…

We show that descriptive complexity's result extends in High Order Logic to capture the expressivity of Turing Machine which have a finite number of alternation and whose time or space is bounded by a finite tower of exponential. Hence we…

The relevance of polynomial formula classes to deductive efficiency motivated their search, and currently, a great number of such classes is known. Nonetheless, they have been exclusively sought in the setting of clausal form and…

We study the expressive power of successor-invariant first-order logic, which is an extension of first-order logic where the usage of an additional successor relation on the structure is allowed, as long as the validity of formulas is…

We study elementary modal logics, i.e. modal logic considered over first-order definable classes of frames. The classical semantics of modal logic allows infinite structures, but often practical applications require to restrict our…

We study two extensions of FO2[<], first-order logic interpreted in finite words, in which formulas are restricted to use only two variables. We adjoin to this language two-variable atomic formulas that say, "the letter $a$ appears between…

We study multimodal logics over universally first-order definable classes of frames. We show that even for bimodal logics, there are universal Horn formulas that define set of frames such that the satisfiability problem is undecidable, even…

Let $\mathrm{SO}^{\mathit{plog}}$ denote the restriction of second-order logic, where second-order quantification ranges over relations of size at most poly-logarithmic in the size of the structure. In this article we investigate the…

In the framework of computable queries in Database Theory, there are many examples of queries to (properties of) relational database instances that can be expressed by simple and elegant third order logic ($\mathrm{TO}$) formulae. In many…

This paper tackles the problem of the existence of solutions for recursive systems of Horn clauses with second-order variables interpreted as integer relations, and harnessed by quantifier-free difference bounds arithmetic. We start by…