Related papers: On the nonexistence of FO-continuous path and tree…
We study tree-to-tree transformations that can be defined in first-order logic or monadic second-order logic. We prove a decomposition theorem, which shows that every transformation can be obtained from prime transformations, such as…
Quasi-trees generalize trees in that the unique "path" between two nodes may be infinite and have any countable order type. They are used to define the rank-width of a countable graph in such a way that it is equal to the least upper-bound…
For fragments L of first-order logic (FO) with counting quantifiers, we consider the definability problem, which asks whether a given L-formula can be equivalently expressed by a formula in some fragment of L without counting, and the more…
We introduce monoidal width as a measure of the difficulty of decomposing morphisms in monoidal categories. For graphs, we show that monoidal width and two variations capture existing notions, namely branch width, tree width and path width.…
The tree-cut width of a graph is a graph parameter defined by Wollan [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. B, 110:47-66, 2015] with the help of tree-cut decompositions. In certain cases, tree-cut width appears to be more adequate than treewidth as an…
Tarski initiated a logic-based approach to formal geometry that studies first-order structures with a ternary betweenness relation (\beta) and a quaternary equidistance relation (\equiv). Tarski established, inter alia, that the first-order…
We prove that every graph has a canonical tree of tree-decompositions that distinguishes all principal tangles (these include the ends and various kinds of large finite dense structures) efficiently. Here `trees of tree-decompositions' are…
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…
Over the past decade, we witness an increasing amount of interest in the design of exact exponential-time and parameterized algorithms for problems in Graph Drawing. Unfortunately, we still lack knowledge of general methods to develop such…
We prove that the (divisorial) gonality of a finite connected graph is lower bounded by its treewidth. We show that equality holds for grid graphs and complete multipartite graphs. We prove that the treewidth lower bound also holds for…
Graph canonization is the problem of computing a unique representative, a canon, from the isomorphism class of a given graph. This implies that two graphs are isomorphic exactly if their canons are equal. We show that graphs of bounded tree…
We show that the model-checking problem for successor-invariant first-order logic is fixed-parameter tractable on graphs with excluded topological subgraphs when parameterised by both the size of the input formula and the size of the…
Tree-width is an invaluable tool for computational problems on graphs. But often one would like to compute on other kinds of objects (e.g. decorated graphs or even algebraic structures) where there is no known tree-width analogue. Here we…
Weighted First Order Model Counting (WFOMC) is fundamental to probabilistic inference in statistical relational learning models. As WFOMC is known to be intractable in general ($\#$P-complete), logical fragments that admit polynomial time…
The treewidth boundedness problem for a logic asks for the existence of an upper bound on the treewidth of the models of a given formula in that logic. This problem is found to be undecidable for first order logic. We consider a…
The graph parameter shrub-depth is a dense analog of tree-depth. We characterize classes of bounded shrub-depth by forbidden induced subgraphs. The obstructions are well-controlled flips of large half-graphs and of disjoint unions of many…
We study FO+, a fragment of first-order logic on finite words, where monadic predicates can only appear positively. We show that there is an FO-definable language that is monotone in monadic predicates but not definable in FO+. This…
Graph classes of bounded tree rank were introduced recently in the context of the model checking problem for first-order logic of graphs. These graph classes are a common generalization of graph classes of bounded degree and bounded…
Query evaluation on probabilistic databases is generally intractable (#P-hard). Existing dichotomy results have identified which queries are tractable (or safe), and connected them to tractable lineages. In our previous work, using…
We consider the domino problem on Schreier graphs of self-similar groups, and more generally their monadic second-order logic. On the one hand, we prove that if the group is bounded then the graph's monadic second-order logic is decidable.…