This article fits in the area of research that investigates the application of topological duality methods to problems that appear in theoretical computer science. One of the eventual goals of this approach is to derive results in computational complexity theory by studying appropriate topological objects which characterize them. The link which relates these two seemingly separated fields is logic, more precisely a subdomain of finite model theory known as logic on words. It allows for a description of complexity classes as certain families of languages, possibly non-regular, on a finite alphabet. Very few is known about the duality theory relative to fragments of first-order logic on words which lie outside of the scope of regular languages. The contribution of our work is a detailed study of such a fragment. Fixing an integer $k \geq 1$, we consider the Boolean algebra $\mathcal{B}Σ_1[\mathcal{N}^{u}_k]$. It corresponds to the fragment of logic on words consisting in Boolean combinations of sentences defined by using a block of at most $k$ existential quantifiers, letter predicates and uniform numerical predicates of arity $l \in \{1,...,k\}$. We give a detailed study of the dual space of this Boolean algebra, for any $k \geq 1$, and provide several characterizations of its points. In the particular case where $k=1$, we are able to construct a family of ultrafilter equations which characterize the Boolean algebra $\mathcal{B} Σ_1[\mathcal{N}^{u}_1]$. We use topological methods in order to prove that these equations are sound and complete with respect to the Boolean algebra we mentioned.
We introduce a new decidable fragment of first-order logic with equality, which strictly generalizes two already well-known ones -- the Bernays-Schönfinkel-Ramsey (BSR) Fragment and the Monadic Fragment. The defining principle is the syntactic separation of universally quantified variables from existentially quantified ones at the level of atoms. Thus, our classification neither rests on restrictions on quantifier prefixes (as in the BSR case) nor on restrictions on the arity of predicate symbols (as in the monadic case). We demonstrate that the new fragment exhibits the finite model property …
We propose an interpretation of the first-order answer set programming (FOASP) in terms of intuitionistic proof theory. It is obtained by two polynomial translations between FOASP and the bounded-arity fragment of the Sigma_1 level of the Mints hierarchy in first-order intuitionistic logic. It follows that Sigma_1 formulas using predicates of fixed arity (in particular unary) is of the same strength as FOASP. Our construction reveals a close similarity between constructive provability and stable entailment, or equivalently, between the construction of an answer set and an intuitionistic refuta…
First-order linear real arithmetic enriched with uninterpreted predicate symbols yields an interesting modeling language. However, satisfiability of such formulas is undecidable, even if we restrict the uninterpreted predicate symbols to arity one. In order to find decidable fragments of this language, it is necessary to restrict the expressiveness of the arithmetic part. One possible path is to confine arithmetic expressions to difference constraints of the form $x - y \mathrel{\#} c$, where $\#$ ranges over the standard relations $<, \leq, =, \neq, \geq, >$ and $x,y$ are universally quantifi…
We study the algorithmic properties of first-order monomodal logics of frames $\langle \mathbb{N}, \leq \rangle$, $\langle \mathbb{N}, < \rangle$, $\langle \mathbb{Q}, \leq \rangle$, $\langle \mathbb{Q}, < \rangle$, $\langle \mathbb{R}, \leq \rangle$, $\langle \mathbb{R}, < \rangle$, as well as some related logics, in languages with restrictions on the number of individual variables as well as the number and arity of predicate letters. We show that the logics of frames based on $\mathbb{N}$ are $Π^1_1$-hard -- thus, not recursively enumerable -- in languages with two individual variables, one …
The first-order theory of addition over the natural numbers, known as Presburger arithmetic, is decidable in double exponential time. Adding an uninterpreted unary predicate to the language leads to an undecidable theory. We sharpen the known boundary between decidable and undecidable in that we show that the purely universal fragment of the extended theory is already undecidable. Our proof is based on a reduction of the halting problem for two-counter machines to unsatisfiability of sentences in the extended language of Presburger arithmetic that does not use existential quantification. On th…
A parameterised Boolean equation system (PBES) is a set of equations that defines sets satisfying the equations as the least and/or greatest fixed-points. Thus this system is regarded as a declarative program defining predicates, where a program execution returns whether a given ground atomic formula holds or not. The program execution corresponds to the membership problem of PBESs, which is however undecidable in general. This paper proposes a subclass of PBESs which expresses universal-quantifiers free formulas, and studies a technique to solve the problem on it. We use the fact that the mem…
In this manuscript, assuming that Graedel's 1991 results are correct (which implies that bounds on the solution values for optimization problems can be expressed in existential second order logic where the first order part is universal Horn), I will show that Clique and Vertex Cover can be solved in polynomial time if the input structure is ordered and contains a successor predicate. In the last section, we will argue about the validity of Graedel's 1991 results. Update: Manuscript withdrawn, because results are incorrect. If phi = phi_1 AND phi_2, and phi is a Horn formula, it does NOT mean t…
Institute of Logic and Computation, TU Wien（维也纳工业大学逻辑与计算研究所）；Computer Science Department, University of Wrocław（弗罗茨瓦夫大学计算机科学系）；Leipzig University（莱比锡大学）
Quantified Boolean formulas (QBFs) generalize propositional formulas by admitting quantifications over propositional variables. QBFs can be viewed as (restricted) formulas of first-order predicate logic and easy translations of QBFs into first-order formulas exist. We analyze different translations and show that first-order resolution combined with such translations can polynomially simulate well-known deduction concepts for QBFs. Furthermore, we extend QBF calculi by the possibility to instantiate a universal variable by an existential variable of smaller level. Combining such an enhanced cal…
In many scenarios, complete and incomplete information coexist. For this reason, the knowledge representation and database communities have long shown interest in simultaneously supporting the closed- and the open-world views when reasoning about logic theories. Here we consider the setting of querying possibly incomplete data using logic theories, formalized as the evaluation of an ontology-mediated query (OMQ) that pairs a query with a theory, sometimes called an ontology, expressing background knowledge. This can be further enriched by specifying a set of closed predicates from the theory t…
For relational monadic formulas (the Löwenheim class) second-order quantifier elimination, which is closely related to computation of uniform interpolants, projection and forgetting - operations that currently receive much attention in knowledge processing - always succeeds. The decidability proof for this class by Heinrich Behmann from 1922 explicitly proceeds by elimination with equivalence preserving formula rewriting. Here we reconstruct the results from Behmann's publication in detail and discuss related issues that are relevant in the context of modern approaches to second-order quantifi…
