23 research outputs found
Canonizing Graphs of Bounded Tree Width in Logspace
Graph canonization is the problem of computing a unique representative, a
canon, from the isomorphism class of a given graph. This implies that two
graphs are isomorphic exactly if their canons are equal. We show that graphs of
bounded tree width can be canonized by logarithmic-space (logspace) algorithms.
This implies that the isomorphism problem for graphs of bounded tree width can
be decided in logspace. In the light of isomorphism for trees being hard for
the complexity class logspace, this makes the ubiquitous class of graphs of
bounded tree width one of the few classes of graphs for which the complexity of
the isomorphism problem has been exactly determined.Comment: 26 page
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
The parameterized space complexity of model-checking bounded variable first-order logic
The parameterized model-checking problem for a class of first-order sentences
(queries) asks to decide whether a given sentence from the class holds true in
a given relational structure (database); the parameter is the length of the
sentence. We study the parameterized space complexity of the model-checking
problem for queries with a bounded number of variables. For each bound on the
quantifier alternation rank the problem becomes complete for the corresponding
level of what we call the tree hierarchy, a hierarchy of parameterized
complexity classes defined via space bounded alternating machines between
parameterized logarithmic space and fixed-parameter tractable time. We observe
that a parameterized logarithmic space model-checker for existential bounded
variable queries would allow to improve Savitch's classical simulation of
nondeterministic logarithmic space in deterministic space .
Further, we define a highly space efficient model-checker for queries with a
bounded number of variables and bounded quantifier alternation rank. We study
its optimality under the assumption that Savitch's Theorem is optimal
Parameterized Complexity of Fixed-Variable Logics
We study the complexity of model checking formulas in first-order logic parameterized by the number of distinct variables in the formula. This problem, which is not known to be fixed-parameter tractable, resisted to be properly classified in the context of parameterized complexity. We show that it is complete for a newly-defined complexity class that we propose as an analog of the classical class PSPACE in parameterized complexity. We support this intuition by the following findings: First, the proposed class admits a definition in terms of alternating Turing machines in a similar way as PSPACE can be defined in terms of polynomial-time alternating machines. Second, we show that parameterized versions of other PSPACE-complete problems, like winning certain pebble games and finding restricted resolution refutations, are complete for this class
The parameterized space complexity of model-checking bounded variable first-order logic
The parameterized model-checking problem for a class of first-order sentences
(queries) asks to decide whether a given sentence from the class holds true in
a given relational structure (database); the parameter is the length of the
sentence. We study the parameterized space complexity of the model-checking
problem for queries with a bounded number of variables. For each bound on the
quantifier alternation rank the problem becomes complete for the corresponding
level of what we call the tree hierarchy, a hierarchy of parameterized
complexity classes defined via space bounded alternating machines between
parameterized logarithmic space and fixed-parameter tractable time. We observe
that a parameterized logarithmic space model-checker for existential bounded
variable queries would allow to improve Savitch's classical simulation of
nondeterministic logarithmic space in deterministic space .
Further, we define a highly space efficient model-checker for queries with a
bounded number of variables and bounded quantifier alternation rank. We study
its optimality under the assumption that Savitch's Theorem is optimal