On the Parameterised Intractability of Monadic Second-Order Logic

dc.creatorKreutzer, Stephan
dc.date2009-04-08
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T13:01:42Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T13:01:42Z
dc.descriptionOne of Courcelle's celebrated results states that if C is a class of graphs of bounded tree-width, then model-checking for monadic second order logic is fixed-parameter tractable on C by linear time parameterised algorithms. An immediate question is whether this is best possible or whether the result can be extended to classes of unbounded tree-width. In this paper we show that in terms of tree-width, the theorem can not be extended much further. More specifically, we show that if C is a class of graphs which is closed under colourings and satisfies certain constructibility conditions such that the tree-width of C is not bounded by log^{16}(n) then MSO_2-model checking is not fixed-parameter tractable unless the satisfiability problem SAT for propositional logic can be solved in sub-exponential time. If the tree-width of C is not poly-logarithmically bounded, then MSO_2-model checking is not fixed-parameter tractable unless all problems in the polynomial-time hierarchy, and hence in particular all problems in NP, can be solved in sub-exponential time.
dc.description23 pages
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/0904.1302
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/0904.1302
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/226234
dc.subjectLogic in Computer Science
dc.subjectComputational Complexity
dc.titleOn the Parameterised Intractability of Monadic Second-Order Logic
dc.typetext

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