The Constant Degree Hypothesis was introduced by Barrington et. al. (1990) to study some extensions of $q$-groups by nilpotent groups and the power of these groups in a certain computational model. In its simplest formulation, it establishes exponential lower bounds for $\mathrm{AND}_d \circ \mathrm{MOD}_m \circ \mathrm{MOD}_q$ circuits computing AND of unbounded arity $n$ (for constant integers $d,m$ and a prime $q$). While it has been proved in some special cases (including $d=1$), it remains wide open in its general form for over 30 years. In this paper we prove that the hypothesis holds when we restrict our attention to symmetric circuits with $m$ being a prime. While we build upon techniques by Grolmusz and Tardos (2000), we have to prove a new symmetric version of their Degree Decreasing Lemma and apply it in a highly non-trivial way. Moreover, to establish the result we perform a careful analysis of automorphism groups of $\mathrm{AND} \circ \mathrm{MOD}_m$ subcircuits and study the periodic behaviour of the computed functions. Finally, our methods also yield lower bounds when $d$ is treated as a function of $n$.

We show that CC-circuits of bounded depth have the same expressive power as circuits over finite nilpotent algebras from congruence modular varieties. We use this result to phrase and discuss a new algebraic version of Barrington, Straubing and Th\'erien's conjecture, which states that CC-circuits of bounded depth need exponential size to compute AND. Furthermore, we investigate the complexity of deciding identities and solving equations in a fixed nilpotent algebra. Under the assumption that the conjecture is true, we obtain quasipolynomial algorithms for both problems. On the other hand, if AND is computable by uniform CC-circuits of bounded depth and polynomial size, we can construct a nilpotent algebra in which checking identities is coNP-complete, and solving equations is NP-complete.

We produce a class of $\omega$-categorical structures with finite signature by applying a model-theoretic construction---a refinement of the Hrushovski-encoding---to $\omega$-categorical structures in a possibly infinite signature. We show that the encoded structures retain desirable algebraic properties of the original structures, but that the constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) associated with these structures can be badly behaved in terms of computational complexity. This method allows us to systematically generate $\omega$-categorical templates whose CSPs are complete for a variety of complexity classes of arbitrarily high complexity and $\omega$-categorical templates that show that membership in any given complexity class containing AC$^0$ cannot be expressed by a set of identities on the polymorphisms. It moreover enables us to prove that recent results about the relevance of topology on polymorphism clones of $\omega$-categorical structures also apply for CSP templates, i.e., structures in a finite language. Finally, we obtain a concrete algebraic criterion which could constitute a description of the delineation between tractability and NP-hardness in the dichotomy conjecture for first-order reducts of finitely bounded homogeneous structures.

We produce a class of ω-categorical structures with finite signature by applying a model-theoretic construction - a refinement of an encoding due to Hrushosvki - to ω-categorical structures in a possibly infinite signature. We show that the encoded structures retain desirable algebraic properties of the original structures, but that the constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) associated with these structures can be badly behaved in terms of computational complexity. This method allows us to systematically generate ω-categorical templates whose CSPs are complete for a variety of complexity classes of arbitrarily high complexity, and ω-categorical templates that show that membership in any given complexity class cannot be expressed by a set of identities on the polymorphisms. It moreover enables us to prove that recent results about the relevance of topology on polymorphism clones of ω-categorical structures also apply for CSP templates, i.e., structures in a finite language. Finally, we obtain a concrete algebraic criterion which could constitute a description of the delineation between tractability and NP-hardness in the dichotomy conjecture for first-order reducts of finitely bounded homogeneous structures.

Abstract Given two structures ${\cal M}$ and ${\cal N}$ on the same domain, we say that ${\cal N}$ is a reduct of ${\cal M}$ if all $\emptyset$ -definable relations of ${\cal N}$ are $\emptyset$ -definable in ${\cal M}$ . In this article the reducts of the Henson digraphs are classified. Henson digraphs are homogeneous countable digraphs that omit some set of finite tournaments. As the Henson digraphs are ${\aleph _0}$ -categorical, determining their reducts is equivalent to determining the closed supergroupsG≤ Sym(ℕ) of their automorphism groups. A consequence of the classification is that there are ${2^{{\aleph _0}}}$ pairwise noninterdefinable Henson digraphs which have no proper nontrivial reducts. Taking their automorphisms groups gives a positive answer to a question of Macpherson that asked if there are ${2^{{\aleph _0}}}$ pairwise nonconjugate maximal-closed subgroups of Sym(ℕ). By the reconstruction results of Rubin, these groups are also nonisomorphic as abstract groups.

There exist two conjectures for constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) of reducts of finitely bounded homogeneous structures: the first one states that tractability of the CSP of such a structure is, when the structure is a model-complete core, equivalent to its polymorphism clone satisfying a certain non-trivial linear identity modulo outer embeddings. The second conjecture, challenging the approach via model-complete cores by reflections, states that tractability is equivalent to the linear identities (without outer embeddings) satisfied by its polymorphisms clone, together with the natural uniformity on it, being non-trivial. We prove that the identities satisfied in the polymorphism clone of a structure allow for conclusions about the orbit growth of its automorphism group, and apply this to show that the two conjectures are equivalent. We contrast this with a counterexample showing that ω-categoricity alone is insufficient to imply the equivalence of the two conditions above in a model-complete core. Taking a different approach, we then show how the Ramsey property of a homogeneous structure can be utilized for obtaining a similar equivalence under different conditions. We then prove that any polymorphism of sufficiently large arity which is totally symmetric modulo outer embeddings of a finitely bounded structure can be turned into a non-trivial system of linear identities, and obtain non-trivial linear identities for all tractable cases of reducts of the rational order, the random graph, and the random poset. Finally, we provide a new and short proof, in the language of monoids, of the theorem stating that every ω-categorical structure is homomorphically equivalent to a model-complete core.

We determine the complexity of all constraint satisfaction problems over partial orders, in particular we show that every such problem is NP-complete or can be solved in polynomial time. This result generalises the complexity dichotomy for temporal constraint satisfaction problems by Bodirsky and Kára. We apply the so called universal-algebraic approach together with tools from model theory and Ramsey theory to prove our result. In the course of this analysis we also establish a structural dichotomy regarding the model theoretic properties of the reducts of the random partial order.