Michael Thomas’s research while affiliated with Vrana GmbH (Germany) and other places

We investigate the application of Courcelle’s theorem and the logspace version of Elberfeld et al. in the context of non-monotonic reasoning. Here we formalize the implication problem for propositional sets of formulas, the extension existence problem for default logic, the expansion existence problem for autoepistemic logic, the circumscriptive inference problem, as well as the abduction problem in monadic second order logic and thereby obtain fixed-parameter time and space efficient algorithms for these problems. On the other hand, we exhibit, for each of the above problems, families of instances of a very simple structure that, for a wide range of different parameterizations, do not have efficient fixed-parameter algorithms (even in the sense of the large class XPnu, resp., XLnu) under standard complexity assumptions.

Hybrid logic with binders is an expressive specification language. Its satisfiability problem is undecidable in general. If frames are restricted to N or general linear orders, then satisfiability is known to be decidable, but of non-elementary complexity. In this paper, we consider monotone hybrid logics (i.e., the Boolean connectives are conjunction and disjunction only) over N and general linear orders. We show that the satisfiability problem remains non-elementary over linear orders, but its complexity drops to PSPACE-completeness over N. We categorize the strict fragments arising from different combinations of modal and hybrid operators into NP-complete and tractable (i.e. complete for NC1or LOGSPACE). Interestingly, NP-completeness depends only on the fragment and not on the frame. For the cases above NP, satisfiability over linear orders is harder than over N, while below NP it is at most as hard. In addition we examine model-theoretic properties of the fragments in question.

The class NC1 of problems solvable by bounded fan-in circuit families of logarithmic depth is known to be contained in logarithmic space L, but not much about the converse is known. In this paper we examine the structure of classes in between NC1 and L based on counting functions or, equivalently, based on arithmetic circuits. The classes PNC1 and C=NC1, defined by a test for positivity and a test for zero, respectively, of arithmetic circuit families of logarithmic depth, sit in this complexity interval. We study the landscape of Boolean hierarchies, constant-depth oracle hierarchies, and logarithmic-depth oracle hierarchies over PNC1 and C=NC1. We provide complete problems, obtain the upper bound L for all these hierarchies, and prove partial hierarchy collapses. In particular, the constant-depth oracle hierarchy over PNC1 collapses to its first level PNC1, and the constant-depth oracle hierarchy over C=NC1 collapses to its second level.

Default logic is one of the most popular and successful formalisms for non-monotonic reasoning. In 2002, Bonatti and Olivetti introduced several sequent calculi for credulous and skeptical reasoning in propositional default logic. In this paper we examine these calculi from a proof-complexity perspective. In particular, we show that the calculus for credulous reasoning obeys almost the same bounds on the proof size as Gentzen’s system LK. Hence proving lower bounds for credulous reasoning will be as hard as proving lower bounds for LK. On the other hand, we show an exponential lower bound to the proof size in Bonatti and Olivetti’s enhanced calculus for skeptical default reasoning.

We investigate the application of Courcelle's Theorem and the logspace version of Elberfeld etal. in the context of the implication problem for propositional sets of formulae, the extension existence problem for default logic, as well as the expansion existence problem for autoepistemic logic and obtain fixed-parameter time and space efficient algorithms for these problems. On the other hand, we exhibit, for each of the above problems, families of instances of a very simple structure that, for a wide range of different parameterizations, do not have efficient fixed-parameter algorithms (even in the sense of the large class XPnu), unless P=NP.

In this paper we initiate the study of proof systems where verification of proofs proceeds by \protectNC0\protect{\ensuremath{\mathsf{NC}}}^{0} circuits. We investigate the question which languages admit proof systems in this very restricted model. Formulated alternatively, we ask which languages can be enumerated by \protectNC0\protect{\ensuremath{\mathsf{NC}}}^{0} functions. Our results show that the answer to this problem is not determined by the complexity of the language. On the one hand, we construct \protectNC0\protect{\ensuremath{\mathsf{NC}}}^{0} proof systems for a variety of languages ranging from regular to \protectNP\protect{\ensuremath{\mathsf{NP}}}-complete. On the other hand, we show by combinatorial methods that even easy regular languages such as Exact-OR do not admit \protectNC0\protect{\ensuremath{\mathsf{NC}}}^{0} proof systems. We also present a general construction of \protectNC0\protect{\ensuremath{\mathsf{NC}}}^{0} proof systems for regular languages with strongly connected NFA’s.

Many proposals for logic-based formalisations of argumentation consider an argument as a pair (Φ,α), where the support Φ is understood as a minimal consistent subset of a given knowledge base which has to entail the claim α. In case the arguments are given in the full language of classical propositional logic reasoning in such frameworks becomes a computationally costly task. For instance, the problem of deciding whether there exists a support for a given claim has been shown to be -complete. In order to better understand the sources of complexity (and to identify tractable fragments), we focus on arguments given over formulæ in which the allowed connectives are taken from certain sets of Boolean functions. We provide a complexity classification for four different decision problems (existence of a support, checking the validity of an argument, relevance and dispensability) with respect to all possible sets of Boolean functions. Moreover, we make use of a general schema to enumerate all arguments to show that certain restricted fragments permit polynomial delay. Finally, we give a classification also in terms of counting complexity.

The model checking problem for CTL is known to be P-complete (Clarke, Emerson, and Sistla (1986), see Schnoebelen (2002)). We consider fragments of CTL obtained by restricting the use of temporal modalities or the use of negations---restrictions already studied for LTL by Sistla and Clarke (1985) and Markey (2004). For all these fragments, except for the trivial case without any temporal operator, we systematically prove model checking to be either inherently sequential (P-complete) or very efficiently parallelizable (LOGCFL-complete). For most fragments, however, model checking for CTL is already P-complete. Hence our results indicate that, in cases where the combined complexity is of relevance, approaching CTL model checking by parallelism cannot be expected to result in any significant speedup. We also completely determine the complexity of the model checking problem for all fragments of the extensions ECTL, CTL+, and ECTL+.

Many proposals for logic-based formalizations of argumen- tation consider an argument as a pair (©, ®), where the support © is understood as a minimal consistent subset of a given knowledge base which has to entail the claim ®. In most scenarios, arguments are given in the full language of classical propositional logic which makes reason- ing in such frameworks a computationally costly task. For instance, the problem of deciding whether there exists a support for a given claim has been shown to be § p 2-complete. In order to better understand the sources of complexity (and to identify tractable fragments), we focus on arguments given over formulae in which the allowed connectives are taken from certain sets of Boolean functions. We provide a complexity classification for four different decision problems (existence of a support, checking the validity of an argument, relevance and dispensability) with respect to all possible sets of Boolean functions.