Related papers: Capturing the polynomial hierarchy by second-order…
We study the expressive powers of SO-HORN$^{*}$, SO-HORN$^{r}$ and SO-HORN$^{*r}$ on all finite structures. We show that SO-HORN$^{r}$, SO-HORN$^{*r}$, FO(LFP) coincide with each other and SO-HORN$^{*}$ is proper sublogic of SO-HORN$^{r}$.…
Let $\mathrm{SO}^{\mathit{plog}}$ denote the restriction of second-order logic, where second-order quantification ranges over relations of size at most poly-logarithmic in the size of the structure. In this article we investigate the…
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…
Second-order Boolean logic is a generalization of QBF, whose constant alternation fragments are known to be complete for the levels of the exponential time hierarchy. We consider two types of restriction of this logic: 1) restrictions to…
Lindstr\"om theorems characterize logics in terms of model-theoretic conditions such as Compactness and the L\"owenheim-Skolem property. Most existing characterizations of this kind concern extensions of first-order logic. But on the other…
In this paper, we consider the well-known modal logics $\mathbf{K}$, $\mathbf{T}$, $\mathbf{K4}$, and $\mathbf{S4}$, and we study some of their sub-propositional fragments, namely the classical Horn fragment, the Krom fragment, the…
We present a structural resolution to the exact evaluation of the partition function $p_k(n)$, systematically overcoming the limitations of traditional recursive and asymptotic methods. By framing the partition polytope $\mathcal{P}_{n,k}$…
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…
The characterization of PSPACE-queries over ordered structures as exactly those expressible in first-order logic with partial fixpoints (Vardi'82) is one of the classical results in the field of descriptive complexity. In this paper, we…
We show that for any $i > 0$, it is decidable, given a regular language, whether it is expressible in the $\Sigma_i[<]$ fragment of first-order logic FO[<]. This settles a question open since 1971. Our main technical result relies on the…
Descriptive complexity theory aims at inferring a problem's computational complexity from the syntactic complexity of its description. A cornerstone of this theory is Fagin's Theorem, by which a graph property is expressible in existential…
We consider the one-variable fragment of first-order logic extended with Presburger constraints. The logic is designed in such a way that it subsumes the previously-known fragments extended with counting, modulo counting or cardinality…
A classical result in descriptive complexity theory states that Datalog expresses exactly the class of polynomially computable queries on ordered databases. In this paper we extend this result to the case of higher-order Datalog. In…
We determine, up to the equivalence of first-order interdefinability, all structures which are first-order definable in the random partial order. It turns out that these structures fall into precisely five equivalence classes. We achieve…
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…
The Univalent Foundations requires a logic that allows us to define structures on homotopy types, similar to how first-order logic with equality ($\text{FOL}_=$) allows us to define structures on sets. We develop the syntax, semantics and…
We present a structural representation of the Herbrand content of LK-proofs with cuts of complexity prenex Sigma-2/Pi-2. The representation takes the form of a typed non-deterministic tree grammar of order 2 which generates a finite…
We study the expressive power of fragments of inclusion and independence logic defined by restricting the number k of universal quantifiers in formulas. Assuming the so-called strict semantics for these logics, we relate these fragments of…
Lindstr\"om's Theorem characterizes first order logic as the maximal logic satisfying the Compactness Theorem and the Downward L\"owenheim-Skolem Theorem. If we do not assume that logics are closed under negation, there is an obvious…
We consider the complexity (in terms of the arithmetical hierarchy) of the various quantifier levels of the diagram of a computably presented metric structure. As the truth value of a sentence of continuous logic may be any real in $[0,1]$,…