119 research outputs found
On Symmetric Circuits and Fixed-Point Logics
We study properties of relational structures such as graphs that are decided
by families of Boolean circuits. Circuits that decide such properties are
necessarily invariant to permutations of the elements of the input structures.
We focus on families of circuits that are symmetric, i.e., circuits whose
invariance is witnessed by automorphisms of the circuit induced by the
permutation of the input structure. We show that the expressive power of such
families is closely tied to definability in logic. In particular, we show that
the queries defined on structures by uniform families of symmetric Boolean
circuits with majority gates are exactly those definable in fixed-point logic
with counting. This shows that inexpressibility results in the latter logic
lead to lower bounds against polynomial-size families of symmetric circuits.Comment: 22 pages. Full version of a paper to appear in STACS 201
Investigating Logics for Feasible Computation
The most celebrated open problem in theoretical computer science is, undoubtedly, the problem of whether P = NP. This is actually one instance of the many unresolved questions in the area of computational complexity. Many different classes of decision problems have been defined in terms of the resources needed to recognize them on various models of computation, such as deterministic or non-deterministic Turing machines, parallel machines and randomized machines. Most of the non-trivial questions concerning the inter-relationship between these classes remain unresolved. On the other hand, these classes have proved to be robustly defined, not only in that they are closed under natural transformations, but many different characterizations have independently defined the same classes. One such alternative approach is that of descriptive complexity, which seeks to define the complexity, not of computing a problem, but of describing it in a language such as the Predicate Calculus. It is particularly interesting that this approach yields a surprisingly close correspondence to computational complexity classes. This provides a natural characterization of many complexity classes that is not tied to a particular machine model of computation
Generalized Quantifiers and Logical Reducibilities
We consider extensions of first order logic (FO) and least fixed point logic (LFP) with generalized quantifiers in the sense of Lindström [Lin66]. We show that adding a finite set of such quantifiers to LFP fails to capture all polynomial time properties of structures, even over a fixed signature. We show that this strengthens results in [Hel92] and [KV92a]. We also consider certain regular infinite sets of Lindström quantifiers, which correspond to a natural notion of logical reducibility. We show that if there is any recursively enumerable set of quantifiers that can be added to FO (or LFP) to capture P, then there is one with strong uniformity conditions. This is established through a general result, linking the existence of complete problems for complexity classes with respect to the first order translations of [Imm87] or the elementary reductions of [LG77] with the existence of recursive index sets for these classes
The Ackermann Award 2016
The Ackermann Award is the EACSL Outstanding Dissertation Award for Logic in Computer Science. It is presented during the annual conference of the EACSL (CSL\u27xx). This contribution reports on the 2016 edition of the award
Domination Problems in Nowhere-Dense Classes
We investigate the parameterized complexity of generalisations and variations
of the dominating set problem on classes of graphs that are nowhere dense. In
particular, we show that the distance- dominating-set problem, also known
as the -centres problem, is fixed-parameter tractable on any class that
is nowhere dense and closed under induced subgraphs. This generalises known
results about the dominating set problem on -minor free classes, classes
with locally excluded minors and classes of graphs of bounded expansion. A
key feature of our proof is that it is based simply on the fact that these
graph classes are uniformly quasi-wide, and does not rely on a structural
decomposition. Our result also establishes that the distance-
dominating-set problem is FPT on classes of bounded expansion, answering a
question of Ne{v s}et{v r}il and Ossona de Mendez
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