We present an adapted construction of algebraic circuits over the reals introduced by Cucker and Meer to arbitrary infinite integral domains and generalize the $\mathrm{AC}_{\mathbb{R}}$ and $\mathrm{NC}_{\mathbb{R}}^{}$ classes for this setting. We give a theorem in the style of Immerman’s theorem which shows that for these adapted formalisms, sets decided by circuits of constant depth and polynomial size are the same as sets definable by a suitable adaptation of first-order logic. Additionally, we discuss a generalization of the guarded predicative logic by Durand, Haak and Vollmer, and we show characterizations for the $\mathrm{AC}_{R}$ and $\mathrm{NC}_R^{}$ hierarchy. Those generalizations apply to the Boolean $\mathrm{AC}$ and $\mathrm{NC}$ hierarchies as well. Furthermore, we introduce a formalism to be able to compare some of the aforementioned complexity classes with different underlying integral domains.

In this article, we study the complexity of weighted team definability for logics with team semantics. This problem is a natural analog of one of the most studied problems in parameterized complexity, the notion of weighted Fagin-definability, which is formulated in terms of satisfaction of first-order formulas with free relation variables. We focus on the parameterized complexity of weighted team definability for a fixed formula $\varphi$ of central team-based logics. Given a first-order structure $\mathcal{A}$ and the parameter value $k\in \mathbb N$ as input, the question is to determine whether $\mathcal{A},T\models \varphi$ for some team T of size k. We show several results on the complexity of this problem for dependence, independence, and inclusion logic formulas. Moreover, we also relate the complexity of weighted team definability to the complexity classes in the well-known W-hierarchy as well as paraNP.

A game that characterizes equivalence of structures with respect to all first-order sentences containing a given number of quantifiers was introduced by Immerman in 1981. We define three other games and prove that they are all equivalent to the Immerman game, and hence also give a characterization for the number of quantifiers needed for separating structures. In the Immerman game, Duplicator has a canonical optimal strategy, and hence Duplicator can be completely removed from the game by replacing her moves with default moves given by this optimal strategy. On the other hand, in the last two of our games there is no such optimal strategy for Duplicator. Thus, the Immerman game can be regarded as a one-player game, but two of our games are genuine two-player games.

We introduce three measures of complexity for families of sets. Each of the three measures, which we call dimensions, is defined in terms of the minimal number of convex subfamilies that are needed for covering the given family. For upper dimension, the subfamilies are required to contain a unique maximal set, for dual upper dimension a unique minimal set, and for cylindrical dimension both a unique maximal and a unique minimal set. In addition to considering dimensions of particular families of sets, we study the behavior of dimensions under operators that map families of sets to new families of sets. We identify natural sufficient criteria for such operators to preserve the growth class of the dimensions. We apply the theory of our dimensions for proving new hierarchy results for logics with team semantics. To this end we associate each atom with a natural notion or arity. First, we show that the standard logical operators preserve the growth classes of the families arising from the semantics of formulas in such logics. Second, we show that the upper dimension of $k+1$-ary dependence, inclusion, independence, anonymity, and exclusion atoms is in a strictly higher growth class than that of any k-ary atoms, whence the $k+1$-ary atoms are not definable in terms of any atoms of smaller arity.