3,683 research outputs found
Deciding first-order properties of nowhere dense graphs
Nowhere dense graph classes, introduced by Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez,
form a large variety of classes of "sparse graphs" including the class of
planar graphs, actually all classes with excluded minors, and also bounded
degree graphs and graph classes of bounded expansion.
We show that deciding properties of graphs definable in first-order logic is
fixed-parameter tractable on nowhere dense graph classes. At least for graph
classes closed under taking subgraphs, this result is optimal: it was known
before that for all classes C of graphs closed under taking subgraphs, if
deciding first-order properties of graphs in C is fixed-parameter tractable,
then C must be nowhere dense (under a reasonable complexity theoretic
assumption).
As a by-product, we give an algorithmic construction of sparse neighbourhood
covers for nowhere dense graphs. This extends and improves previous
constructions of neighbourhood covers for graph classes with excluded minors.
At the same time, our construction is considerably simpler than those. Our
proofs are based on a new game-theoretic characterisation of nowhere dense
graphs that allows for a recursive version of locality-based algorithms on
these classes. On the logical side, we prove a "rank-preserving" version of
Gaifman's locality theorem.Comment: 30 page
Testing first-order properties for subclasses of sparse graphs
We present a linear-time algorithm for deciding first-order (FO) properties
in classes of graphs with bounded expansion, a notion recently introduced by
Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez. This generalizes several results from the
literature, because many natural classes of graphs have bounded expansion:
graphs of bounded tree-width, all proper minor-closed classes of graphs, graphs
of bounded degree, graphs with no subgraph isomorphic to a subdivision of a
fixed graph, and graphs that can be drawn in a fixed surface in such a way that
each edge crosses at most a constant number of other edges. We deduce that
there is an almost linear-time algorithm for deciding FO properties in classes
of graphs with locally bounded expansion.
More generally, we design a dynamic data structure for graphs belonging to a
fixed class of graphs of bounded expansion. After a linear-time initialization
the data structure allows us to test an FO property in constant time, and the
data structure can be updated in constant time after addition/deletion of an
edge, provided the list of possible edges to be added is known in advance and
their simultaneous addition results in a graph in the class. All our results
also hold for relational structures and are based on the seminal result of
Nesetril and Ossona de Mendez on the existence of low tree-depth colorings
Testing first-order properties for subclasses of sparse graphs
We present a linear-time algorithm for deciding first-order (FO) properties in classes of graphs with bounded expansion, a notion recently introduced by NeÅ”etÅil and Ossona de Mendez. This generalizes several results from the literature, because many natural classes of graphs have bounded expansion: graphs of bounded tree-width, all proper minor-closed classes of graphs, graphs of bounded degree, graphs with no subgraph isomorphic to a subdivision of a fixed graph, and graphs that can be drawn in a fixed surface in such a way that each edge crosses at most a constant number of other edges. We deduce that there is an almost linear-time algorithm for deciding FO properties in classes of graphs with locally bounded expansion.
More generally, we design a dynamic data structure for graphs belonging to a fixed class of graphs of bounded expansion. After a linear-time initialization the data structure allows us to test an FO property in constant time, and the data structure can be updated in constant time after addition/deletion of an edge, provided the list of possible edges to be added is known in advance and their simultaneous addition results in a graph in the class. All our results also hold for relational structures and are based on the seminal result of NeÅ”etÅil and Ossona de Mendez on the existence of low tree-depth colorings
Successor-Invariant First-Order Logic on Graphs with Excluded Topological Subgraphs
We show that the model-checking problem for successor-invariant first-order
logic is fixed-parameter tractable on graphs with excluded topological
subgraphs when parameterised by both the size of the input formula and the size
of the exluded topological subgraph. Furthermore, we show that model-checking
for order-invariant first-order logic is tractable on coloured posets of
bounded width, parameterised by both the size of the input formula and the
width of the poset.
Our result for successor-invariant FO extends previous results for this logic
on planar graphs (Engelmann et al., LICS 2012) and graphs with excluded minors
(Eickmeyer et al., LICS 2013), further narrowing the gap between what is known
for FO and what is known for successor-invariant FO. The proof uses Grohe and
Marx's structure theorem for graphs with excluded topological subgraphs. For
order-invariant FO we show that Gajarsk\'y et al.'s recent result for FO
carries over to order-invariant FO
First-Order Query Evaluation with Cardinality Conditions
We study an extension of first-order logic that allows to express cardinality
conditions in a similar way as SQL's COUNT operator. The corresponding logic
FOC(P) was introduced by Kuske and Schweikardt (LICS'17), who showed that query
evaluation for this logic is fixed-parameter tractable on classes of structures
(or databases) of bounded degree. In the present paper, we first show that the
fixed-parameter tractability of FOC(P) cannot even be generalised to very
simple classes of structures of unbounded degree such as unranked trees or
strings with a linear order relation.
Then we identify a fragment FOC1(P) of FOC(P) which is still sufficiently
strong to express standard applications of SQL's COUNT operator. Our main
result shows that query evaluation for FOC1(P) is fixed-parameter tractable
with almost linear running time on nowhere dense classes of structures. As a
corollary, we also obtain a fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for counting
the number of tuples satisfying a query over nowhere dense classes of
structures
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