English

Arity hierarchies for quantifiers closed under partial polymorphisms

Logic in Computer Science 2025-11-17 v1 Computational Complexity

Abstract

We investigate the expressive power of generalized quantifiers closed under partial polymorphism conditions motivated by the study of constraint satisfaction problems. We answer a number of questions arising from the work of Dawar and Hella (CSL 2024) where such quantifiers were introduced. For quantifiers closed under partial near-unanimity polymorphisms, we establish hierarchy results clarifying the interplay between the arity of the polymorphisms and of the quantifiers: The expressive power of (+1)(\ell+1)-ary quantifiers closed under \ell-ary partial near-unanimity polymorphisms is strictly between the class of all quantifiers of arity 1\ell-1 and \ell. We also establish an infinite hierarchy based on the arity of quantifiers with a fixed arity of partial near-unanimity polymorphisms. Finally, we prove inexpressiveness results for quantifiers with a partial Maltsev polymorphism. The separation results are proved using novel algebraic constructions in the style of Cai-F\"urer-Immerman and the quantifier pebble games of Dawar and Hella (2024).

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.11326,
  title  = {Arity hierarchies for quantifiers closed under partial polymorphisms},
  author = {Anuj Dawar and Lauri Hella and Benedikt Pago},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.11326},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

accepted for publication at CSL 2026

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:37:32.154Z