English

Dichotomy results for classes of countable graphs

Logic 2025-12-11 v1 Computational Complexity

Abstract

We study classes of countable graphs where every member does not contain a given finite graph as an induced subgraph -- denoted by Free(G)\mathsf{Free}(\mathcal{G}) for a given finite graph G\mathcal{G}. Our main results establish a structural dichotomy for such classes: If G\mathcal{G} is not an induced subgraph of P4\mathcal{P}_4, then Free(G)\mathsf{Free}(\mathcal{G}) is on top under effective bi-interpretability, implying that the members of Free(G)\mathsf{Free}(\mathcal{G}) exhibit the full range of structural and computational behaviors. In contrast, if G\mathcal{G} is an induced subgraph of P4\mathcal{P}_4, then Free(G)\mathsf{Free}(\mathcal{G}) is structurally simple, as witnessed by the fact that every member satisfies the computable embeddability condition. This dichotomy is mirrored in the finite setting when one considers combinatorial and complexity-theoretic properties. Specifically, it is known that Free(G)fin\mathsf{Free}(\mathcal{G})^{fin} is complete for graph isomorphism and not a well-quasi-order under embeddability whenever G\mathcal{G} is not an induced subgraph of P4\mathcal{P}_4, while in all other cases Free(G)fin\mathsf{Free}(\mathcal{G})^{fin} forms a well-quasi-order and the isomorphism problem for Free(G)fin\mathsf{Free}(\mathcal{G})^{fin} is solvable in polynomial time.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.09832,
  title  = {Dichotomy results for classes of countable graphs},
  author = {Vittorio Cipriani and Ekaterina Fokina and Matthew Harrison-Trainor and Liling Ko and Dino Rossegger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.09832},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:19:08.612Z