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