Related papers: Existential Second-Order Logic Over Graphs: A Comp…
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…
It follows from the famous Fagin's theorem that all problems in NP are expressible in existential second-order logic (ESO), and vice versa. Indeed, there are well-known ESO characterizations of NP-complete problems such as 3-colorability,…
We introduce a restricted second-order logic $\mathrm{SO}^{\mathit{plog}}$ for finite structures where second-order quantification ranges over relations of size at most poly-logarithmic in the size of the structure. We demonstrate the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The complexity class $NP$ can be logically characterized both through existential second order logic $SO\exists$, as proven by Fagin, and through simulating a Turing machine via the satisfiability problem of propositional logic SAT, as…
We consider logic-based argumentation in which an argument is a pair (Fi,al), where the support Fi is a minimal consistent set of formulae taken from a given knowledge base (usually denoted by De) that entails the claim al (a formula). We…
First-order logic (FO) can express many algorithmic problems on graphs, such as the independent set and dominating set problem, parameterized by solution size. On the other hand, FO cannot express the very simple algorithmic question of…
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…
Descriptive Complexity has been very successful in characterizing complexity classes of decision problems in terms of the properties definable in some logics. However, descriptive complexity for counting complexity classes, such as FP and…
For every $q\in \mathbb N$ let $\textrm{FO}_q$ denote the class of sentences of first-order logic FO of quantifier rank at most $q$. If a graph property can be defined in $\textrm{FO}_q$, then it can be decided in time $O(n^q)$. Thus,…
We show that ESO universal Horn logic (existential second logic where the first order part is a universal Horn formula) is insufficient to capture P, the class of problems decidable in polynomial time. This statement is true in the presence…
We study first-order logic (FO) over the structure consisting of finite words over some alphabet $A$, together with the (non-contiguous) subword ordering. In terms of decidability of quantifier alternation fragments, this logic is…
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…
We study the complexity of the model checking problem, for fixed model A, over certain fragments L of first-order logic. These are sometimes known as the expression complexities of L. We obtain various complexity classification theorems for…
Order-invariant first-order logic is an extension of first-order logic FO where formulae can make use of a linear order on the structures, under the proviso that they are order-invariant, i.e. that their truth value is the same for all…
We propose a fragment of many-sorted second order logic called EQSMT and show that checking satisfiability of sentences in this fragment is decidable. EQSMT formulae have an $\exists^*\forall^*$ quantifier prefix (over variables, functions…