In this paper we ask the question, "What must be added to first-order logic plus least-fixed point to obtain exactly the polynomial-time properties of unordered graphs?" We consider the languages Lk consisting of first-order logic restricted to k variables and Ck consisting of Lk plus "counting quantifiers". We give efficient canonization algorithms for graphs characterized by Ck or Lk . It follows from known results that all trees and almost all graphs are characterized by C2 .

Traditionally, computational complexity has considered only static problems. Classical Complexity Classes such as NC, P, and NP are defined in terms of the complexity of checking -- upon presentation of an entire input -- whether the input satisfies a certain property. For many applications of computers it is more appropriate to model the process as a dynamic one. There is a fairly large object being worked on over a period of time. The object is repeatedly modified by users and computations are performed. We develop a theory of Dynamic Complexity. We study the new complexity class, Dynamic First-Order Logic (Dyn-FO). This is the set of properties that can be maintained and queried in first-order logic, i.e. relational calculus, on a relational database. We show that many interesting properties are in Dyn-FO including multiplication, graph connectivity, bipartiteness, and the computation of minimum spanning trees. Note that none of these problems is in static FO, and this f...

We show that for most complexity classes of interest, all sets complete under first-order projections are isomorphic under first-order isomorphisms. That is, a very restricted version of the Berman-Hartmanis Conjecture holds.

The L ? = NL question remains one of the major unresolved problems in complexity theory. Both L and NL have logical characterizations as the sets of totally ordered () structures expressible in first-order logic augmented with the appropriate Transitive Closure operator [I87]: (FO+DTC+ ) captures L and (FO+TC+ ) captures NL. On the other hand, in the absence of ordering, (FO + TC) is strictly more powerful than (FO +DTC) [GM92]. An apparently quite different "structured" model of logspace machines is the Jumping Automaton on Graphs (JAG), [CR80]. We show that the JAG model is intimately related to these logics on "one-way locally ordered" (1LO) structures. We argue that the usual JAG model is unreasonably weak and should be replaced, wherever possible, by the two-way JAG model, which we define. Furthermore, the language (FO + DTC + 2LO) over two-way locally ordered (2LO) graphs is more robust than even the two-way JAG model, and yet lower bounds remain accessible. We pro...

We describe three orthogonal complexity measures: parallel time, amount of hardware, and degree of nonuniformity, which together parametrize most complexity classes. We show that the descriptive complexity framework neatly captures these measures using the parameters: quantifier depth, number of variable bits, and type of numeric predicates respectively. A fairly simple picture arises in which the basic questions in complexity theory -- solved and unsolved -- can be understood as questions about tradeoffs among these three dimensions. 1 Introduction An initial presentation of complexity theory usually makes the implicit assumption that problems, and hence complexity classes, are linearly ordered by "difficulty ". In the Chomsky Hierarchy each new type of automaton can decide more languages, and the Time Hierarchy Theorem tells us adding more time allows a Turing machine to decide more languages. Indeed the word "complexity" is often used (e.g., in the study of algorithms) to mean "wo...

this article is complete for NSPACE[log n].)

Gregory McColm conjectured that positive elementary inductions are bounded in a class K of finite structures if every (FO + LFP) formula is equivalent to a first-order formula in K. Here (FO + LFP) is the extension of first-order logic with the least fixed point operator. We disprove the conjecture. Our main results are two model-theoretic constructions, one deterministic and the other randomized, each of which refutes McColm’s conjecture. 1

Introduction Investigation of the measure-theoretic structure of complexity classes began with the development of resource-bounded measure in 1991 [56]. Since that time, a growing body of research by more than forty scientists around the world has shown resource-bounded measure to be a powerful tool that sheds new light on many aspects of computational complexity. Recent survey papers by Lutz [60], Ambos-Spies and Mayordomo [3], and Buhrman and Torenvliet [22] describe many of the achievements of this line of inquiry. In this column, we give a more recent snapshot of resource-bounded measure, focusing not so much on what has been achieved to date as on what we hope will be achieved in the near future. Section 2 below gives a brief, nontechnical overview of resource-bounded measure in terms of its motivation and principal ideas. Sections 3, 4, and 5 describe twelve specific open problems in the area. We have used the following three criteria in choosing these problems. 1. Their