Related papers: Hereditary First-Order Logic: the tractable quanti…
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…
In this article we formally define and investigate the computational complexity of the Definability Problem for open first-order formulas (i.e., quantifier free first-order formulas) with equality. Given a logic $\mathbf{\mathcal{L}}$, the…
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 introduce the logic FOCN(P) which extends first-order logic by counting and by numerical predicates from a set P, and which can be viewed as a natural generalisation of various counting logics that have been studied in the literature. We…
We study property testing of properties that are definable in first-order logic (FO) in the bounded-degree graph and relational structure models. We show that any FO property that is defined by a formula with quantifier prefix…
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…
Program semantics can often be expressed as a (many-sorted) first-order theory S, and program properties as sentences $\varphi$ which are intended to hold in the canonical model of such a theory, which is often incomputable. Recently, we…
In various applications the search for certificates for certain properties (e.g., stability of dynamical systems, program termination) can be formulated as a quantified constraint solving problem with quantifier prefix exists-forall. In…
The parameterized model-checking problem for a class of first-order sentences (queries) asks to decide whether a given sentence from the class holds true in a given relational structure (database); the parameter is the length of the…
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…
This work deals with the definability problem by quantifier-free first-order formulas over a finite algebraic structure. We show the problem to be coNP-complete and present two decision algorithms based on a semantical characterization of…
We give a construction of a large first-order definable family of subrings of finitely generated fields $K$ of any characteristic. We deduce that for any such $K$ there exists a first-order sentence $\varphi_K$ characterising $K$ in the…
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…
A graph class $\mathscr{C}$ is called monadically stable if one cannot interpret, in first-order logic, arbitrary large linear orders in colored graphs from $\mathscr{C}$. We prove that the model checking problem for first-order logic is…
Various feature descriptions are being employed in logic programming languages and constrained-based grammar formalisms. The common notational primitive of these descriptions are functional attributes called features. The descriptions…
By Fagin's Theorem, NP contains precisely those problems that can be described by formulas starting with an existential second-order quantifier, followed by only first-order quantifiers (ESO formulas). Subsequent research refined this…
In this paper we address the decision problem for a fragment of set theory with restricted quantification which extends the language studied in [4] with pair related quantifiers and constructs, in view of possible applications in the field…
The constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) of a first-order theory T is the computational problem of deciding whether a given conjunction of atomic formulas is satisfiable in some model of T. We study the computational complexity of CSP$(T_1…
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…
A dichotomy result of Sevenster (2014) completely classified the quantifier prefixes of regular Independence-Friendly (IF) logic according to the patterns of quantifier dependence they contain. On one hand, prefixes that contain "Henkin" or…