Definability equals recognizability for k-outerplanar graphs and l-chordal partial k-trees

Abstract

One of the most famous algorithmic meta-theorems states that every graph property which can be defined in counting monadic second order logic (CMSOL) can be checked in linear time on graphs of bounded treewidth, which is known as Courcelle's Theorem (Courcelle, 1990). These algorithms are constructed as finite state tree automata and hence every CMSOL-definable graph property is recognizable. Courcelle also conjectured that the converse holds, i.e. every recognizable graph property is definable in CMSOL for graphs of bounded treewidth. In this paper we prove two special cases of this conjecture, first for the class of k-outerplanar graphs, which are known to have treewidth at most 3k−1 (Bodlaender, 1998) and for graphs of bounded treewidth without chordless cycles of length at least some constant ℓ. We furthermore show that for a proof of Courcelle's Conjecture it is sufficient to show that all members of a graph class admit constant width tree decompositions whose bags and edges can be identified with MSOL-predicates. For graph classes that admit MSOL-definable constant width tree decompositions that have bounded degree or allow for a linear ordering of all nodes with the same parent we even give a stronger result: In that case, the counting predicates of CMSOL are not needed.