Related papers: Deciding first-order properties of nowhere dense g…

We study property testing of properties that are definable in first-order logic (FO) in the bounded-degree graph and relational structure models. We show that any FO property that is defined by a formula with quantifier prefix…

A conjecture in algorithmic model theory predicts that the model-checking problem for first-order logic is fixed-parameter tractable on a hereditary graph class if and only if the class is monadically dependent. Originating in model theory,…

Over the past two decades the main focus of research into first-order (FO) model checking algorithms has been on sparse relational structures - culminating in the FPT algorithm by Grohe, Kreutzer and Siebertz for FO model checking of…

We prove that for any monotone class of finite relational structures, the first-order theory of the class is NIP in the sense of stability theory if, and only if, the collection of Gaifman graphs of structures in this class is nowhere…

We prove that whenever $G$ is a graph from a nowhere dense graph class $\mathcal{C}$, and $A$ is a subset of vertices of $G$, then the number of subsets of $A$ that are realized as intersections of $A$ with $r$-neighborhoods of vertices of…

We study the problems of counting copies and induced copies of a small pattern graph $H$ in a large host graph $G$. Recent work fully classified the complexity of those problems according to structural restrictions on the patterns $H$. In…

We study the first-order model checking problem on two generalisations of pushdown graphs. The first class is the class of nested pushdown trees. The other is the class of collapsible pushdown graphs. Our main results are the following.…

A graph is called 1-planar if it can be drawn on the plane so that each edge is crossed by at most one other edge. In this paper, we establish a local property of 1-planar graphs which describes the structure in the neighborhood of small…

We study the first-order (FO) model checking problem of dense graphs, namely those which have FO interpretations in (or are FO transductions of) some sparse graph classes. We give a structural characterization of the graph classes which are…

We say that a first order formula $\Phi$ defines a graph $G$ if $\Phi$ is true on $G$ and false on every graph $G'$ non-isomorphic with $G$. Let $D(G)$ be the minimal quantifier rank of a such formula. We prove that, if $G$ is a tree of…

We prove several negative results about first-order transducibility for classes of sparse graphs: - for every $t \in \mathbb{N}$, the class of graphs of treewidth at most $t+1$ is not transducible from the class of graphs of treewidth at…

We consider limit probabilities of first order properties in random graphs with a given degree sequence. Under mild conditions on the degree sequence, we show that the closure set of limit probabilities is a finite union of closed…

A class of graphs $\mathscr{C}$ is monadically stable if for any unary expansion $\widehat{\mathscr{C}}$ of $\mathscr{C}$, one cannot interpret, in first-order logic, arbitrarily long linear orders in graphs from $\widehat{\mathscr{C}}$. It…

(First-order) transductions are a basic notion capturing graph modifications that can be described in first-order logic. In this work, we propose an efficient algorithmic method to approximately reverse the application of a transduction,…

Preferential attachment graphs are random graphs designed to mimic properties of typical real world networks. They are constructed by a random process that iteratively adds vertices and attaches them preferentially to vertices that already…

The elimination distance to some target graph property P is a general graph modification parameter introduced by Bulian and Dawar. We initiate the study of elimination distances to graph properties expressible in first-order logic. We…

Suppose $G$ is a graph with degrees bounded by $d$, and one needs to remove more than $\epsilon n$ of its edges in order to make it planar. We show that in this case the statistics of local neighborhoods around vertices of $G$ is far from…

Frick and Grohe [J. ACM 48 (2006), 1184-1206] introduced a notion of graph classes with locally bounded tree-width and established that every first order logic property can be decided in almost linear time in such a graph class. Here, we…

We consider hereditary classes of graphs equipped with a total order. We provide multiple equivalent characterisations of those classes which have bounded twin-width. In particular, we prove a grid theorem for classes of ordered graphs…

We prove that for every nowhere dense class of graphs $\mathcal{C}$, positive integer $d$, and $\varepsilon>0$, the following holds: in every $n$-vertex graph $G$ from $\mathcal{C}$ one can find two disjoint vertex subsets $A,B\subseteq…