Nowhere Dense Graph Classes and Dimension

Nowhere dense graph classes provide one of the least restrictive notions of sparsity for graphs. Several equivalent characterizations of nowhere dense classes have been obtained over the years, using a wide range of combinatorial objects. In this paper we establish a new characterization of nowhere dense classes, in terms of poset dimension: A monotone graph class is nowhere dense if and only if for every $h \geq 1$ and every $\epsilon > 0$, posets of height at most $h$ with $n$ elements and whose cover graphs are in the class have dimension $\mathcal{O}(n^{\epsilon})$.Comment: v4: Minor changes suggested by a refere

Families of abelian varieties with many isogenous fibres

Let Z be a subvariety of the moduli space of principally polarised abelian varieties of dimension g over the complex numbers. Suppose that Z contains a Zariski dense set of points which correspond to abelian varieties from a single isogeny class. A generalisation of a conjecture of Andr\'e and Pink predicts that Z is a weakly special subvariety. We prove this when dim Z = 1 using the Pila--Zannier method and the Masser--W\"ustholz isogeny theorem. This generalises results of Edixhoven and Yafaev when the Hecke orbit consists of CM points and of Pink when it consists of Galois generic points.Comment: Gap in Lemma 3.3 found and corrected by Gabriel Dil

O-minimality and certain atypical intersections

We show that the strategy of point counting in o-minimal structures can be applied to various problems on unlikely intersections that go beyond the conjectures of Manin-Mumford and Andr\'e-Oort. We verify the so-called Zilber-Pink Conjecture in a product of modular curves on assuming a lower bound for Galois orbits and a sufficiently strong modular Ax-Schanuel Conjecture. In the context of abelian varieties we obtain the Zilber-Pink Conjecture for curves unconditionally when everything is defined over a number field. For higher dimensional subvarieties of abelian varieties we obtain some weaker results and some conditional results

Querying the Guarded Fragment

Evaluating a Boolean conjunctive query Q against a guarded first-order theory F is equivalent to checking whether "F and not Q" is unsatisfiable. This problem is relevant to the areas of database theory and description logic. Since Q may not be guarded, well known results about the decidability, complexity, and finite-model property of the guarded fragment do not obviously carry over to conjunctive query answering over guarded theories, and had been left open in general. By investigating finite guarded bisimilar covers of hypergraphs and relational structures, and by substantially generalising Rosati's finite chase, we prove for guarded theories F and (unions of) conjunctive queries Q that (i) Q is true in each model of F iff Q is true in each finite model of F and (ii) determining whether F implies Q is 2EXPTIME-complete. We further show the following results: (iii) the existence of polynomial-size conformal covers of arbitrary hypergraphs; (iv) a new proof of the finite model property of the clique-guarded fragment; (v) the small model property of the guarded fragment with optimal bounds; (vi) a polynomial-time solution to the canonisation problem modulo guarded bisimulation, which yields (vii) a capturing result for guarded bisimulation invariant PTIME.Comment: This is an improved and extended version of the paper of the same title presented at LICS 201