10,651 research outputs found
Preservation and decomposition theorems for bounded degree structures
We provide elementary algorithms for two preservation theorems for
first-order sentences (FO) on the class \^ad of all finite structures of degree
at most d: For each FO-sentence that is preserved under extensions
(homomorphisms) on \^ad, a \^ad-equivalent existential (existential-positive)
FO-sentence can be constructed in 5-fold (4-fold) exponential time. This is
complemented by lower bounds showing that a 3-fold exponential blow-up of the
computed existential (existential-positive) sentence is unavoidable. Both
algorithms can be extended (while maintaining the upper and lower bounds on
their time complexity) to input first-order sentences with modulo m counting
quantifiers (FO+MODm). Furthermore, we show that for an input FO-formula, a
\^ad-equivalent Feferman-Vaught decomposition can be computed in 3-fold
exponential time. We also provide a matching lower bound.Comment: 42 pages and 3 figures. This is the full version of: Frederik
Harwath, Lucas Heimberg, and Nicole Schweikardt. Preservation and
decomposition theorems for bounded degree structures. In Joint Meeting of the
23rd EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL) and the 29th
Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS), CSL-LICS'14,
pages 49:1-49:10. ACM, 201
Domains of Commutative C-Subalgebras
Contains fulltext :
147450.pdf (preprint version ) (Open Access)LICS 2015 : 2015 30th Annual ACM/IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, 6-10 July 2015 Kyoto, Japa
On the Scope of the Universal-Algebraic Approach to Constraint Satisfaction
The universal-algebraic approach has proved a powerful tool in the study of
the complexity of CSPs. This approach has previously been applied to the study
of CSPs with finite or (infinite) omega-categorical templates, and relies on
two facts. The first is that in finite or omega-categorical structures A, a
relation is primitive positive definable if and only if it is preserved by the
polymorphisms of A. The second is that every finite or omega-categorical
structure is homomorphically equivalent to a core structure. In this paper, we
present generalizations of these facts to infinite structures that are not
necessarily omega-categorical. (This abstract has been severely curtailed by
the space constraints of arXiv -- please read the full abstract in the
article.) Finally, we present applications of our general results to the
description and analysis of the complexity of CSPs. In particular, we give
general hardness criteria based on the absence of polymorphisms that depend on
more than one argument, and we present a polymorphism-based description of
those CSPs that are first-order definable (and therefore can be solved in
polynomial time).Comment: Extended abstract appeared at 25th Symposium on Logic in Computer
Science (LICS 2010). This version will appear in the LMCS special issue
associated with LICS 201
Generalised dualities and maximal finite antichains in the homomorphism order of relational structures
The motivation for this paper is threefold. First, we study the connectivity properties of the homomorphism order of directed graphs, and more generally for relational structures. As opposed to the homomorphism order of undirected graphs (which has no non-trivial finite maximal antichains), the order of directed graphs has finite maximal antichains of any size. In this paper, we characterise explicitly all maximal antichains in the homomorphism order of directed graphs.
Quite surprisingly, these maximal antichains correspond to generalised dualities. The notion of generalised duality is defined here in full generality as an extension of the notion of finitary duality, investigated in [J. Nešetřil, C. Tardif, Duality theorems for finite structures (characterising gaps and good characterisations), J. Combin. Theory Ser. B 80 (1) (2000) 80–97]. Building upon the results of the cited paper, we fully characterise the generalised dualities. It appears that these dualities are determined by forbidding homomorphisms from a finite set of forests (rather than trees).
Finally, in the spirit of [A. Atserias, On digraph coloring problems and treewidth duality, in: Proceedings of the 21st IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, LICS’06, IEEE Computer Society, 2006; B. Larose, C. Loten, C. Tardif, A characterisation of first-order constraint satisfaction problems, in: Proceedings of the 21st IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, LICS’06, IEEE Computer Society, 2006; V. Dalmau, A. Krokhin, B. Larose, First-order definable retraction problems for posets and reflexive graphs, in: Proceedings of the 19th IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, LICS’04, IEEE Computer Society, 2004 [5]] we shall characterise “generalised” constraint satisfaction problems (defined also here) that are first-order definable. These are again just generalised dualities corresponding to finite maximal antichains in the homomorphism order
Order Invariance on Decomposable Structures
Order-invariant formulas access an ordering on a structure's universe, but
the model relation is independent of the used ordering. Order invariance is
frequently used for logic-based approaches in computer science. Order-invariant
formulas capture unordered problems of complexity classes and they model the
independence of the answer to a database query from low-level aspects of
databases. We study the expressive power of order-invariant monadic
second-order (MSO) and first-order (FO) logic on restricted classes of
structures that admit certain forms of tree decompositions (not necessarily of
bounded width).
While order-invariant MSO is more expressive than MSO and, even, CMSO (MSO
with modulo-counting predicates), we show that order-invariant MSO and CMSO are
equally expressive on graphs of bounded tree width and on planar graphs. This
extends an earlier result for trees due to Courcelle. Moreover, we show that
all properties definable in order-invariant FO are also definable in MSO on
these classes. These results are applications of a theorem that shows how to
lift up definability results for order-invariant logics from the bags of a
graph's tree decomposition to the graph itself.Comment: Accepted for LICS 201
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