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On the Descriptive Complexity of Vertex Deletion Problems

Authors Max Bannach , Florian Chudigiewitsch , Till Tantau

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Max Bannach
  • European Space Agency, Advanced Concepts Team, Noordwijk, The Netherlands
Florian Chudigiewitsch
  • Universität zu Lübeck, Germany
Till Tantau
  • Universität zu Lübeck, Germany

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Max Bannach, Florian Chudigiewitsch, and Till Tantau. On the Descriptive Complexity of Vertex Deletion Problems. In 49th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 306, pp. 17:1-17:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2024.17

Abstract

Vertex deletion problems for graphs are studied intensely in classical and parameterized complexity theory. They ask whether we can delete at most k vertices from an input graph such that the resulting graph has a certain property. Regarding k as the parameter, a dichotomy was recently shown based on the number of quantifier alternations of first-order formulas that describe the property. In this paper, we refine this classification by moving from quantifier alternations to individual quantifier patterns and from a dichotomy to a trichotomy, resulting in a complete classification of the complexity of vertex deletion problems based on their quantifier pattern. The more fine-grained approach uncovers new tractable fragments, which we show to not only lie in FPT, but even in parameterized constant-depth circuit complexity classes. On the other hand, we show that vertex deletion becomes intractable already for just one quantifier per alternation, that is, there is a formula of the form ∀ x∃ y∀ z (ψ), with ψ quantifier-free, for which the vertex deletion problem is W[1]-hard. The fine-grained analysis also allows us to uncover differences in the complexity landscape when we consider different kinds of graphs and more general structures: While basic graphs (undirected graphs without self-loops), undirected graphs, and directed graphs each have a different frontier of tractability, the frontier for arbitrary logical structures coincides with that of directed graphs.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Finite Model Theory
  • Theory of computation → Complexity theory and logic
  • Theory of computation → Fixed parameter tractability
  • Theory of computation → W hierarchy
Keywords
  • graph problems
  • fixed-parameter tractability
  • descriptive complexity
  • vertex deletion

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