Some fragments of second-order logic over the reals for which satisfiability and equivalence are (un)decidable

We consider the Σ1 0-fragment of second-order logic over the vocabulary h+, ×, 0, 1, <, S1, ..., Ski, interpreted over the reals, where the predicate symbols Si are interpreted as semi-algebraic sets. We show that, in this context, satisfiability of formulas is decidable for the first-order ∃ ∗ - quantifier fragment and undecidable for the ∃ ∗∀- and ∀ ∗ -fragments. We also show that for these three fragments the same (un)decidability results hold for containment and equivalence of formulas.Fil: Grimson, Rafael. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Matemática; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Kuijpers, Bart. Hasselt University; Bélgic

Evaluating geometric queries using few arithmetic operations

Let \cp:=(P_1,...,P_s) be a given family of $n$-variate polynomials with integer coefficients and suppose that the degrees and logarithmic heights of these polynomials are bounded by $d$ and $h$, respectively. Suppose furthermore that for each $1\leq i\leq s$ the polynomial $P_i$ can be evaluated using $L$ arithmetic operations (additions, subtractions, multiplications and the constants 0 and 1). Assume that the family \cp is in a suitable sense \emph{generic}. We construct a database $\cal D$, supported by an algebraic computation tree, such that for each $x\in [0,1]^n$ the query for the signs of $P_1(x),...,P_s(x)$ can be answered using h d^{\cO(n^2)} comparisons and $nL$ arithmetic operations between real numbers. The arithmetic-geometric tools developed for the construction of $\cal D$ are then employed to exhibit example classes of systems of $n$ polynomial equations in $n$ unknowns whose consistency may be checked using only few arithmetic operations, admitting however an exponential number of comparisons

Software Engineering and Complexity in Effective Algebraic Geometry

We introduce the notion of a robust parameterized arithmetic circuit for the evaluation of algebraic families of multivariate polynomials. Based on this notion, we present a computation model, adapted to Scientific Computing, which captures all known branching parsimonious symbolic algorithms in effective Algebraic Geometry. We justify this model by arguments from Software Engineering. Finally we exhibit a class of simple elimination problems of effective Algebraic Geometry which require exponential time to be solved by branching parsimonious algorithms of our computation model.Comment: 70 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1201.434

Degrees of Monotonicity of Spatial Transformations

. We consider spatial databases that can be defined in terms of polynomial inequalities, and we are interested in monotonic transformations of spatial databases. We investigate a hierarchy of monotonicity classes of spatial transformations that is determined by the number of degrees of freedom of the transformations. The result of a monotonic transformation with k degrees of freedom on a spatial database is completely determined by its result on subsets of cardinality at most k of the spatial database. The result of a transformation in the largest class of the hierarchy on a spatial database is determined by its result on arbitrary large subsets of the database. The latter is the class of all the monotonic spatial transformations. We give a sound and complete language for the monotonic spatial transformations that can be expressed in the relational calculus augmented with polynomial inequalities and that belong to a class with a finite number of degrees of freedom. In particular, we s..