Reachability is harder for directed than for undirected finite graphs

Abstract

AbstractAlthough it is known that reachability in undirected finite graphs can be expressed by an existential monadic second-order sentence, our main result is that this is not the case for directed finite graphs (even in the presence of certain “built-in” relations, such as the successor relation). The proof makes use of Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé games, along with probabilistic arguments. However, we show that for directed finite graphs with degree at most k, reachability is expressible by an existential monadic second-order sentence.