Related papers: Definability in the embeddability ordering of fini…

We deal with first-order definability in the substructure ordering $(\mathcal{D}; \sqsubseteq)$ of finite directed graphs. In two papers, the author has already investigated the first-order language of the embeddability ordering $(…

We say that a first order formula A distinguishes a graph G from another graph G' if A is true on G and false on G'. Provided G and G' are non-isomorphic, let D(G,G') denote the minimal quantifier rank of a such formula. We prove that, if G…

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 study the question of whether, for a given class of finite graphs, one can define, for each graph of the class, a linear ordering in monadic second-order logic, possibly with the help of monadic parameters. We consider two variants of…

Let $G$ be a simple finite connected graph. The line graph $L(G)$ of graph $G$ is the graph whose vertices are the edges of $G$, where $ef \in E(L(G))$ when $e \cap f \neq \emptyset$. Iteratively, the higher order line graphs are defined…

We discuss the definability of finite graphs in first-order logic with two relation symbols for adjacency and equality of vertices. The logical depth $D(G)$ of a graph $G$ is equal to the minimum quantifier depth of a sentence defining $G$…

We study the first order theory of structures over graphs i.e. structures of the form ($\mathcal{G},\tau$) where $\mathcal{G}$ is the set of all (isomorphism types of) finite undirected graphs and $\tau$ some vocabulary. We define the…

We consider graph properties that can be checked from labels, i.e., bit sequences, of logarithmic length attached to vertices. We prove that there exists such a labeling for checking a first-order formula with free set variables in the…

We construct a fixed parameter algorithm parameterized by d and k that takes as an input a graph G' obtained from a d-degenerate graph G by complementing on at most k arbitrary subsets of the vertex set of G and outputs a graph H such that…

The notion of bounded expansion captures uniform sparsity of graph classes and renders various algorithmic problems that are hard in general tractable. In particular, the model-checking problem for first-order logic is fixed-parameter…

A directed graph is set-homogeneous if, whenever U and V are isomorphic finite subdigraphs, there is an automorphism g of the digraph with U^g=V. Here, extending work of Lachlan on finite homogeneous digraphs, we classify finite…

We consider isomorphism of controllable graphs and cospectrality of distance-regularized graphs (which are known to be distance-regular or distance-biregular) in relation to logical definability. While most characterizations of these…

We show that it is equivalent, for certain sets of finite graphs, to be definable in CMS (counting monadic second-order logic, a natural extension of monadic second-order logic), and to be recognizable in an algebraic framework induced by…

We study first-order model checking, by which we refer to the problem of deciding whether or not a given first-order sentence is satisfied by a given finite structure. In particular, we aim to understand on which sets of sentences this…

We study the complexity of the following related computational tasks concerning a fixed countable graph G: 1. Does a countable graph H provided as input have a(n induced) subgraph isomorphic to G? 2. Given a countable graph H that has a(n…

In this article, we introduce a geometric and a spectral preorder relation on the class of weighted graphs with a magnetic potential. The first preorder is expressed through the existence of a graph homomorphism respecting the magnetic…

We introduce a new logic, called \emph{cluster first-order logic}, a restricted fragment of first-order logic specifically designed to study order invariance. An order-invariant formula is one on a vocabulary that contains an order;…

We address the problem of characterizing $H$-coloring problems that are first-order definable on a fixed class of relational structures. In this context, we give several characterizations of a homomorphism dualities arising in a class of…

For some geometric graph classes, tractability of testing first-order formulas is precisely characterised by the graph parameter twin-width. This was first proved for interval graphs among others in [BCKKLT, IPEC '22], where the equivalence…

Let $F$ be a connected graph with $\ell$ vertices. The existence of a subgraph isomorphic to $F$ can be defined in first-order logic with quantifier depth no better than $\ell$, simply because no first-order formula of smaller quantifier…