Taylor's modularity conjecture and related problems for idempotent varieties

We provide a partial result on Taylor's modularity conjecture, and several related problems. Namely, we show that the interpretability join of two idempotent varieties that are not congruence modular is not congruence modular either, and we prove an analogue for idempotent varieties with a cube term. Also, similar results are proved for linear varieties and the properties of congruence modularity, having a cube term, congruence $n$-permutability for a fixed $n$, and satisfying a non-trivial congruence identity.Comment: 27 page

The wonderland of reflections

A fundamental fact for the algebraic theory of constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) over a fixed template is that pp-interpretations between at most countable \omega-categorical relational structures have two algebraic counterparts for their polymorphism clones: a semantic one via the standard algebraic operators H, S, P, and a syntactic one via clone homomorphisms (capturing identities). We provide a similar characterization which incorporates all relational constructions relevant for CSPs, that is, homomorphic equivalence and adding singletons to cores in addition to pp-interpretations. For the semantic part we introduce a new construction, called reflection, and for the syntactic part we find an appropriate weakening of clone homomorphisms, called h1 clone homomorphisms (capturing identities of height 1). As a consequence, the complexity of the CSP of an at most countable $\omega$-categorical structure depends only on the identities of height 1 satisfied in its polymorphism clone as well as the the natural uniformity thereon. This allows us in turn to formulate a new elegant dichotomy conjecture for the CSPs of reducts of finitely bounded homogeneous structures. Finally, we reveal a close connection between h1 clone homomorphisms and the notion of compatibility with projections used in the study of the lattice of interpretability types of varieties.Comment: 24 page

Complexity of term representations of finitary functions

The clone of term operations of an algebraic structure consists of all operations that can be expressed by a term in the language of the structure. We consider bounds for the length and the height of the terms expressing these functions, and we show that these bounds are often robust against the change of the basic operations of the structure

Local consistency as a reduction between constraint satisfaction problems

We study the use of local consistency methods as reductions between constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs), and promise version thereof, with the aim to classify these reductions in a similar way as the algebraic approach classifies gadget reductions between CSPs. This research is motivated by the requirement of more expressive reductions in the scope of promise CSPs. While gadget reductions are enough to provide all necessary hardness in the scope of (finite domain) non-promise CSP, in promise CSPs a wider class of reductions needs to be used. We provide a general framework of reductions, which we call consistency reductions, that covers most (if not all) reductions recently used for proving NP-hardness of promise CSPs. We prove some basic properties of these reductions, and provide the first steps towards understanding the power of consistency reductions by characterizing a fragment associated to arc-consistency in terms of polymorphisms of the template. In addition to showing hardness, consistency reductions can also be used to provide feasible algorithms by reducing to a fixed tractable (promise) CSP, for example, to solving systems of affine equations. In this direction, among other results, we describe the well-known Sherali-Adams hierarchy for CSP in terms of a consistency reduction to linear programming

Mechanical behaviour of soils in cyclic loading and its effect on simulations of geotechnical problems

Institute of Hydrogeology, Engineering Geology and Applied GeophysicsÚstav hydrogeologie, inž. geologie a užité geofyzikyPřírodovědecká fakultaFaculty of Scienc

Functors on relational structures which admit both left and right adjoints

This paper describes several cases of adjunction in the homomorphism preorder of relational structures. We say that two functors $\Lambda$ and $\Gamma$ between thin categories of relational structures are adjoint if for all structures $\mathbf A$ and $\mathbf B$, we have that $\Lambda(\mathbf A)$ maps homomorphically to $\mathbf B$ if and only if $\mathbf A$ maps homomorphically to $\Gamma(\mathbf B)$. If this is the case $\Lambda$ is called the left adjoint to $\Gamma$ and $\Gamma$ the right adjoint to $\Lambda$. In 2015, Foniok and Tardif described some functors on the category of digraphs that allow both left and right adjoints. The main contribution of Foniok and Tardif is a construction of right adjoints to some of the functors identified as right adjoints by Pultr in 1970. We generalise results of Foniok and Tardif to arbitrary relational structures, and coincidently, we also provide more right adjoints on digraphs, and since these constructions are connected to finite duality, we also provide a new construction of duals to trees. Our results are inspired by an application in promise constraint satisfaction -- it has been shown that such functors can be used as efficient reductions between these problems

Revisiting alphabet reduction in Dinur’s PCP.

Dinur’s celebrated proof of the PCP theorem alternates two main steps in several iterations: gap amplification to increase the soundness gap by a large constant factor (at the expense of much larger alphabet size), and a composition step that brings back the alphabet size to an absolute constant (at the expense of a fixed constant factor loss in the soundness gap). We note that the gap amplification can produce a Label Cover CSP. This allows us to reduce the alphabet size via a direct long-code based reduction from Label Cover to a Boolean CSP. Our composition step thus bypasses the concept of Assignment Testers from Dinur’s proof, and we believe it is more intuitive - it is just a gadget reduction. The analysis also uses only elementary facts (Parseval’s identity) about Fourier Transforms over the hypercube

Hardness of linearly ordered 4-colouring of 3-colourable 3-uniform hypergraphs

A linearly ordered (LO) $k$-colouring of a hypergraph is a colouring of its vertices with colours $1, \dots, k$ such that each edge contains a unique maximal colour. Deciding whether an input hypergraph admits LO $k$-colouring with a fixed number of colours is NP-complete (and in the special case of graphs, LO colouring coincides with the usual graph colouring). Here, we investigate the complexity of approximating the `linearly ordered chromatic number' of a hypergraph. We prove that the following promise problem is NP-complete: Given a 3-uniform hypergraph, distinguish between the case that it is LO $3$-colourable, and the case that it is not even LO $4$-colourable. We prove this result by a combination of algebraic, topological, and combinatorial methods, building on and extending a topological approach for studying approximate graph colouring introduced by Krokhin, Opr\v{s}al, Wrochna, and \v{Z}ivn\'y (2023)

Distributive and anti-distributive Mendelsohn triple systems

We prove that the existence spectrum of Mendelsohn triple systems whose associated quasigroups satisfy distributivity corresponds to the Loeschian numbers, and provide some enumeration results. We do this by considering a description of the quasigroups in terms of commutative Moufang loops. In addition we provide constructions of Mendelsohn quasigroups that fail distributivity for as many combinations of elements as possible. These systems are analogues of Hall triple systems and anti-mitre Steiner triple systems respectively