Related papers: Existential Second-Order Logic Over Graphs: Parame…
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…
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…
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…
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…
The class of problems complete for NP via first-order reductions is known to be characterized by existential second-order sentences of a fixed form. All such sentences are built around the so-called generalized IS-form of the sentence that…
Treewidth (tw) is an important parameter that, when bounded, yields tractability for many problems. For example, graph problems expressible in Monadic Second Order (MSO) logic and QUANTIFIED SAT or, more generally, QUANTIFIED CSP, are FPT…
We systematically investigate the complexity of model checking the existential positive fragment of first-order logic. In particular, for a set of existential positive sentences, we consider model checking where the sentence is restricted…
Today's propositional satisfiability (SAT) solvers are extremely powerful and can be used as an efficient back-end for solving NP-complete problems. However, many fundamental problems in knowledge representation and reasoning are located at…
In this article, we study parameterized complexity theory from the perspective of logic, or more specifically, descriptive complexity theory. We propose to consider parameterized model-checking problems for various fragments of first-order…
Within the model-theoretic framework for supervised learning introduced by Grohe and Tur\'an (TOCS 2004), we study the parameterized complexity of learning concepts definable in monadic second-order logic (MSO). We show that the problem of…
The first-order (FO) model checking problem asks, given an FO sentence $\phi$ and a graph $G$, whether $G$ is a model of $\phi$. This problem is known to be $\mathsf{AW[*]}$-hard when parameterized by the quantifier rank of the formula. A…
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…
Dependence logic provides an elegant approach for introducing dependencies between variables into the object language of first-order logic. In [1] generalized quantifiers were introduced in this context. However, a satisfactory account was…
We study the synthesis problem for systems with a parameterized number of processes. As in the classical case due to Church, the system selects actions depending on the program run so far, with the aim of fulfilling a given specification.…
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…
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…
Exactly solving first-order constraints (i.e., first-order formulas over a certain predefined structure) can be a very hard, or even undecidable problem. In continuous structures like the real numbers it is promising to compute approximate…
We describe simple algebraic and combinatorial characterisations of finite relational core structures admitting finitely many obstructions. As a consequence, we show that it is decidable to determine whether a constraint satisfaction…
We combine integer linear programming and recent advances in Monadic Second-Order model checking to obtain two new algorithmic meta-theorems for graphs of bounded vertex-cover. The first shows that cardMSO1, an extension of the well-known…