Fixed-parameter tractability, definability, and model checking

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 logic as generic parameterized problems and show how this approach can be useful in studying both fixed-parameter tractability and intractability. For example, we establish the equivalence between the model-checking for existential first-order logic, the homomorphism problem for relational structures, and the substructure isomorphism problem. Our main tractability result shows that model-checking for first-order formulas is fixed-parameter tractable when restricted to a class of input structures with an excluded minor. On the intractability side, for every t >= 0 we prove an equivalence between model-checking for first-order formulas with t quantifier alternations and the parameterized halting problem for alternating Turing machines with t alternations. We discuss the close connection between this alternation hierarchy and Downey and Fellows' W-hierarchy. On a more abstract level, we consider two forms of definability, called Fagin definability and slicewise definability, that are appropriate for describing parameterized problems. We give a characterization of the class FPT of all fixed-parameter tractable problems in terms of slicewise definability in finite variable least fixed-point logic, which is reminiscent of the Immerman-Vardi Theorem characterizing the class PTIME in terms of definability in least fixed-point logic.Comment: To appear in SIAM Journal on Computin

First Order Theories of Some Lattices of Open Sets

We show that the first order theory of the lattice of open sets in some natural topological spaces is $m$-equivalent to second order arithmetic. We also show that for many natural computable metric spaces and computable domains the first order theory of the lattice of effectively open sets is undecidable. Moreover, for several important spaces (e.g., $\mathbb{R}^n$, $n\geq1$, and the domain $P\omega$) this theory is $m$-equivalent to first order arithmetic

The Complexity of Orbits of Computably Enumerable Sets

The goal of this paper is to announce there is a single orbit of the c.e. sets with inclusion, \E, such that the question of membership in this orbit is $\Sigma^1_1$-complete. This result and proof have a number of nice corollaries: the Scott rank of \E is \wock +1; not all orbits are elementarily definable; there is no arithmetic description of all orbits of \E; for all finite $\alpha \geq 9$, there is a properly $\Delta^0_\alpha$ orbit (from the proof). A few small corrections made in this versionComment: To appear in the Bulletion of Symbolic Logi