arXiv · 2509.04347
When Darwin met Ianus: dichotomies of expressivity
Abstract
The classifications of temporal and phylogeny constraint languages stand among the most seminal complexity classifications within infinite-domain Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs), yet remain the most mysterious in terms of algorithms and algebraic invariants for the tractable cases. We show that those languages which do not pp-construct EVERYTHING (and thus by the classifications are solvable in polynomial time) have, in fact, very limited expressive power as measured by the graphs and hypergraphs they can pp-interpret. This limitation yields many previously unknown algebraic consequences, while also providing new, uniform proofs for known invariance properties. In particular, we show that such temporal and phylogeny constraint languages admit $4$-ary pseudo-Siggers polymorphisms -- a result that sustains the possibility that the existence of such polymorphisms extends to the much broader context of the Bodirsky-Pinsker conjecture. Although temporal and phylogeny constraint languages appear to follow fundamentally different algorithmic principles, our proofs reveal a common core and proceed along strikingly similar lines.
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Johanna Brunar, Michael Pinsker, Moritz Schöbi. 2025-09-04. When Darwin met Ianus: dichotomies of expressivity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04347
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