33 research outputs found
Descriptive Complexity of Deterministic Polylogarithmic Time and Space
We propose logical characterizations of problems solvable in deterministic
polylogarithmic time (PolylogTime) and polylogarithmic space (PolylogSpace). We
introduce a novel two-sorted logic that separates the elements of the input
domain from the bit positions needed to address these elements. We prove that
the inflationary and partial fixed point vartiants of this logic capture
PolylogTime and PolylogSpace, respectively. In the course of proving that our
logic indeed captures PolylogTime on finite ordered structures, we introduce a
variant of random-access Turing machines that can access the relations and
functions of a structure directly. We investigate whether an explicit predicate
for the ordering of the domain is needed in our PolylogTime logic. Finally, we
present the open problem of finding an exact characterization of
order-invariant queries in PolylogTime.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of Computer and System Science
Satisfiability of ECTL* with tree constraints
Recently, we have shown that satisfiability for with
constraints over is decidable using a new technique. This approach
reduces the satisfiability problem of with constraints over
some structure A (or class of structures) to the problem whether A has a
certain model theoretic property that we called EHD (for "existence of
homomorphisms is decidable"). Here we apply this approach to concrete domains
that are tree-like and obtain several results. We show that satisfiability of
with constraints is decidable over (i) semi-linear orders
(i.e., tree-like structures where branches form arbitrary linear orders), (ii)
ordinal trees (semi-linear orders where the branches form ordinals), and (iii)
infinitely branching trees of height h for each fixed . We
prove that all these classes of structures have the property EHD. In contrast,
we introduce Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse-games for (weak
with the bounding quantifier) and use them to show that the
infinite (order) tree does not have property EHD. As a consequence, a different
approach has to be taken in order to settle the question whether satisfiability
of (or even ) with constraints over the
infinite (order) tree is decidable
A zero-one law for first-order logic on random images
For an random image with independent pixels, black with probability and white with probability , the probability of satisfying any given first-order sentence tends to or , provided both and tend to or , for any integer . The result is proved by computing the threshold function for basic local sentences, and applying Gaifman's theorem