Theories for TC0 and Other Small Complexity Classes

We present a general method for introducing finitely axiomatizable "minimal" two-sorted theories for various subclasses of P (problems solvable in polynomial time). The two sorts are natural numbers and finite sets of natural numbers. The latter are essentially the finite binary strings, which provide a natural domain for defining the functions and sets in small complexity classes. We concentrate on the complexity class TC^0, whose problems are defined by uniform polynomial-size families of bounded-depth Boolean circuits with majority gates. We present an elegant theory VTC^0 in which the provably-total functions are those associated with TC^0, and then prove that VTC^0 is "isomorphic" to a different-looking single-sorted theory introduced by Johannsen and Pollet. The most technical part of the isomorphism proof is defining binary number multiplication in terms a bit-counting function, and showing how to formalize the proofs of its algebraic properties.Comment: 40 pages, Logical Methods in Computer Scienc

First-Order Rewritability and Complexity of Two-Dimensional Temporal Ontology-Mediated Queries

Aiming at ontology-based data access to temporal data, we design two-dimensional temporal ontology and query languages by combining logics from the (extended) DL-Lite family with linear temporal logic LTL over discrete time (Z,<). Our main concern is first-order rewritability of ontology-mediated queries (OMQs) that consist of a 2D ontology and a positive temporal instance query. Our target languages for FO-rewritings are two-sorted FO(<) - first-order logic with sorts for time instants ordered by the built-in precedence relation < and for the domain of individuals - its extension FOE with the standard congruence predicates t \equiv 0 mod n, for any fixed n > 1, and FO(RPR) that admits relational primitive recursion. In terms of circuit complexity, FOE- and FO(RPR)-rewritability guarantee answering OMQs in uniform AC0 and NC1, respectively. We proceed in three steps. First, we define a hierarchy of 2D DL-Lite/LTL ontology languages and investigate the FO-rewritability of OMQs with atomic queries by constructing projections onto 1D LTL OMQs and employing recent results on the FO-rewritability of propositional LTL OMQs. As the projections involve deciding consistency of ontologies and data, we also consider the consistency problem for our languages. While the undecidability of consistency for 2D ontology languages with expressive Boolean role inclusions might be expected, we also show that, rather surprisingly, the restriction to Krom and Horn role inclusions leads to decidability (and ExpSpace-completeness), even if one admits full Booleans on concepts. As a final step, we lift some of the rewritability results for atomic OMQs to OMQs with expressive positive temporal instance queries. The lifting results are based on an in-depth study of the canonical models and only concern Horn ontologies

Proceedings of the Joint Automated Reasoning Workshop and Deduktionstreffen: As part of the Vienna Summer of Logic – IJCAR 23-24 July 2014

Preface For many years the British and the German automated reasoning communities have successfully run independent series of workshops for anybody working in the area of automated reasoning. Although open to the general public they addressed in the past primarily the British and the German communities, respectively. At the occasion of the Vienna Summer of Logic the two series have a joint event in Vienna as an IJCAR workshop. In the spirit of the two series there will be only informal proceedings with abstracts of the works presented. These are collected in this document. We have tried to maintain the informal open atmosphere of the two series and have welcomed in particular research students to present their work. We have solicited for all work related to automated reasoning and its applications with a particular interest in work-in-progress and the presentation of half-baked ideas. As in the previous years, we have aimed to bring together researchers from all areas of automated reasoning in order to foster links among researchers from various disciplines; among theoreticians, implementers and users alike, and among international communities, this year not just the British and German communities

Combining Treewidth and Backdoors for CSP

We show that CSP is fixed-parameter tractable when parameterized by the treewidth of a backdoor into any tractable CSP problem over a finite constraint language. This result combines the two prominent approaches for achieving tractability for CSP: (i) structural restrictions on the interaction between the variables and the constraints and (ii) language restrictions on the relations that can be used inside the constraints. Apart from defining the notion of backdoor-treewidth and showing how backdoors of small treewidth can be used to efficiently solve CSP, our main technical contribution is a fixed-parameter algorithm that finds a backdoor of small treewidth

Combining Spatial and Temporal Logics: Expressiveness vs. Complexity

In this paper, we construct and investigate a hierarchy of spatio-temporal formalisms that result from various combinations of propositional spatial and temporal logics such as the propositional temporal logic PTL, the spatial logics RCC-8, BRCC-8, S4u and their fragments. The obtained results give a clear picture of the trade-off between expressiveness and computational realisability within the hierarchy. We demonstrate how different combining principles as well as spatial and temporal primitives can produce NP-, PSPACE-, EXPSPACE-, 2EXPSPACE-complete, and even undecidable spatio-temporal logics out of components that are at most NP- or PSPACE-complete

Deciding FO-rewritability of Regular Languages and Ontology-Mediated Queries in Linear Temporal Logic

Our concern is the problem of determining the data complexity of answering an ontology-mediated query (OMQ) formulated in linear temporal logic LTL over (Z,<) and deciding whether it is rewritable to an FO(<)-query, possibly with some extra predicates. First, we observe that, in line with the circuit complexity and FO-definability of regular languages, OMQ answering in AC0, ACC0 and NC1 coincides with FO(<,≡)-rewritability using unary predicates x ≡ 0 (mod n), FO(<,MOD)-rewritability, and FO(RPR)-rewritability using relational primitive recursion, respectively. We prove that, similarly to known PSᴘᴀᴄᴇ-completeness of recognising FO(<)-definability of regular languages, deciding FO(<,≡)- and FO(<,MOD)-definability is also PSᴘᴀᴄᴇ-complete (unless ACC0 = NC1). We then use this result to show that deciding FO(<)-, FO(<,≡)- and FO(<,MOD)-rewritability of LTL OMQs is ExᴘSᴘᴀᴄᴇ-complete, and that these problems become PSᴘᴀᴄᴇ-complete for OMQs with a linear Horn ontology and an atomic query, and also a positive query in the cases of FO(<)- and FO(<,≡)-rewritability. Further, we consider FO(<)-rewritability of OMQs with a binary-clause ontology and identify OMQ classes, for which deciding it is PSᴘᴀᴄᴇ-, Π2p- and coNP-complete

Complexity Classifications for the Valued Constraint Satisfaction Problem

In a valued constraint satisfaction problem (VCSP), the goal is to find an assignment of values to variables that minimizes a given sum of functions. Each function in the sum depends on a subset of variables, takes values which are rational numbers or infinity, and is chosen from a fixed finite set of functions called a constraint language. We study how the computational complexity of this problem depends on the constraint language. We often consider the case where infinite values are disallowed, and refer to such constraint languages as being finite-valued. If we consider such finite-valued constraint languages, the case where we allow variables to take two values was classified by Cohen et al., who show that submodular functions essentially give rise to the only tractable case. Non-submodular functions can be used to express the NP-hard Max Cut problem. We consider the case where the variables can take three values, and identify a new infinite set of functions called skew bisubmodular functions which imply tractability. We prove that submodularity with respect to some total order and skew bisubmodularity give rise to the only tractable cases, and in all other cases Max Cut can be expressed. We also show that our characterisation of tractable cases is tight, that is, none of the conditions can be omitted. Thus, our results provide a new dichotomy theorem in constraint satisfaction research. We also negatively answer the question of whether multimorphisms can capture all necessary tractable constraint languages. We then study the VCSP as a homomorphism problem on digraphs. By adapting a proof designed for CSPs we show that each VCSP with a fixed finite constraint language is equivalent to one where the constraint language consists of one {0,infinity}-valued binary function (i.e. a digraph) and one finite-valued unary function. This latter problem is known as the Minimum Cost Homomorphism Problem for digraphs. We also show that our reduction preserves a number of useful algebraic properties of the constraint language. Finally, given a finite-valued constraint language, we consider the case where the variables of our VCSP are allowed to take four values. We prove that 1-defect chain multimorphisms, which are required in the four element dichotomy of Min CSP, are a special case of more general fractional polymorphisms we call {a,b}-1-defect fractional polymorphisms. We conclude with a conjecture for the four element case, and some interesting open problems which might lead to a tighter description of tractable finite-valued constraint languages on finite domains of any size