Monadic Second Order Finite Satisfiability and Unbounded Tree-Width
Tomer Kotek, Helmut Veith, Florian Zuleger · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2015
The finite satisfiability problem of monadic second order logic is decidable only on classes of structures of bounded tree-width by the classic result of Seese (1991). We prove the following problem is decidable: Input: (i) A monadic second order logic sentence $α$, and (ii) a sentence $β$ in the two-variable fragment of first order logic extended with counting quantifiers. The vocabularies of $α$ and $β$ may intersect. Output: Is there a finite structure which satisfies $α\landβ$ such that the restriction of the structure to the vocabulary of $α$ has bounded tree-width? (The tree-width of the desired structure is not bounded.) As a consequence, we prove the decidability of the satisfiability problem by a finite structure of bounded tree-width of a logic extending monadic second order logic with linear cardinality constraints of the form $|X_{1}|+\cdots+|X_{r}|