Title
Small Substructures and Decidability Issues for First-Order Logic with Two Variables
Abstract
We study first-order logic with two variables FO2 and establish a small substructure property. Similar to the small model property for FO2 we obtain an exponential size bound on embedded substructures, relative to a fixed surrounding structure that may be infinite. We apply this technique to analyse the satisfiability problem for FO2 under constraints that require several binary relations to be interpreted as equivalence relations. With a single equivalence relation, FO2 has the finite model property and is complete for non-deterministic exponential time, just as for plain FO2. With two equivalence relations, FO2 does not have the finite model property, but is shown to be decidable via a construction of regular models that admit finite descriptions even though they may necessarily be infinite. For three or more equivalence relations, FO2 is undecidable.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/LICS.2005.49
J. Symb. Log.
Keywords
DocType
Volume
concurrent computation,first-order logic,small substructures,decidability issues,computability,taxonomy,first order logic,robustness,computer science,hardware,decidability,binary relation,application software,equivalence relation,satisfiability,game theory,equivalence classes,logic,artificial intelligence,knowledge representation
Journal
77
Issue
ISSN
ISBN
3
1043-6871
0-7695-2266-1
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
29
1.40
11
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Emanuel Kieronski111413.85
Martin Otto2985.43