Related papers: Definability in the substructure ordering of finit…
A condition, in two variants, is given such that if a property P satisfies this condition, then every logic which is at least as strong as first-order logic and can express P fails to have the compactness property. The result is used to…
If $G$ is a finite group and $k =q>2$ or $k=q+1$ for a prime power $q$ then, for infinitely many integers $v$, there is a $2$-$(v,k,1)$-design ${\bf D}$ for which ${\rm Aut} {\bf D}\cong G$.
Let $\mathscr C$ be a class of finite and infinite graphs that is closed under induced subgraphs. The well-known {\L}o\'s-Tarski Theorem from classical model theory implies that $\mathscr C$ is definable in first-order logic (FO) by a…
Let $T$ be a (first order complete) dependent theory, ${\mathfrak{C}}$ a $\bar\kappa$-saturated model of $T$ and $G$ a definable subgroup which is abelian. Among subgroups of bounded index which are the union of $<\bar\kappa$ type definable…
We construct the first known examples of infinite subgroups of the outer automorphism group of Out(A_Gamma), for certain right-angled Artin groups A_Gamma. This is achieved by introducing a new class of graphs, called focused graphs, whose…
We refine and advance the study of the local structure of idempotent finite algebras started in [A.Bulatov, The Graph of a Relational Structure and Constraint Satisfaction Problems, LICS, 2004]. We introduce a graph-like structure on an…
We study locally closed transformation monoids which contain the automorphism group of the random graph. We show that such a transformation monoid is locally generated by the permutations in the monoid, or contains a constant operation, or…
The {\em distinguishing number} of a group $G$ acting faithfully on a set $V$ is the least number of colors needed to color the elements of $V$ so that no non-identity element of the group preserves the coloring. The {\em distinguishing…
We show that every infinite, locally finite, and connected graph admitsa translation-like action by $\mathbb{Z}$, and that this action can be takento be transitive exactly when the graph has either one or two ends.The actions constructed…
We show that the decidability of the first-order theory of the language that combines Boolean algebras of sets of uninterpreted elements with Presburger arithmetic operations. We thereby disprove a recent conjecture that this theory is…
We study classes of countable graphs where every member does not contain a given finite graph as an induced subgraph -- denoted by $\mathsf{Free}(\mathcal{G})$ for a given finite graph $\mathcal{G}$. Our main results establish a structural…
Let D denote an infinite alphabet -- a set that consists of infinitely many symbols. A word w = a_0 b_0 a_1 b_1 ... a_n b_n of even length over D can be viewed as a directed graph G_w whose vertices are the symbols that appear in w, and the…
We present a structural approach of some results about jumps in the behavior of the profile (alias generating function) of hereditary classes of finite structures. We start with the following notion due to N.Thi\'ery and the second author.…
Word-representable graphs, characterized by the existence of a semi-transitive orientation, form a well-studied class of graphs. Comparability graphs form another well-studied class and constitute a subclass of word-representable graphs.…
We study the expressive power of first-order logic with counting quantifiers, especially the $k$-variable and quantifier-rank-$q$ fragment $\mathsf{C}^k_q$, using homomorphism indistinguishability. Recently, Dawar, Jakl, and Reggio (2021)…
The study of graph queries in database theory has spanned more than three decades, resulting in a multitude of proposals for graph query languages. These languages differ in the mechanisms. We can identify three main families of languages,…
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…
In this paper we initialize the study of independent domination in directed graphs. We show that an independent dominating set of an orientation of a graph is also an independent dominating set of the underlying graph, but that the converse…
Combining ideas from distributed algorithms and alternating automata, we introduce a new class of finite graph automata that recognize precisely the languages of finite graphs definable in monadic second-order logic. By restricting…
Let D(G) be the smallest quantifier depth of a first order formula which is true for a graph G but false for any other non-isomorphic graph. This can be viewed as a measure for the first order descriptive complexity of G. We will show that…