Characterizations of monadically dependent tree-ordered weakly sparse structures

Abstract

A class of structures is monadically dependent if one cannot interpret all graphs in colored expansions from the class using a fixed first-order formula. A tree-ordered $\sigma$-structure is the expansion of a $\sigma$-structure with a tree-order. A tree-ordered $\sigma$-structure is weakly sparse if the Gaifman graph of its $\sigma$-reduct excludes some biclique (of a given fixed size) as a subgraph. Tree-ordered weakly sparse graphs are commonly used as tree-models (for example for classes with bounded shrubdepth, structurally bounded expansion, bounded cliquewidth, or bounded twin-width), motivating their study on their own. In this paper, we consider several constructions on tree-ordered structures, such as tree-ordered variants of the Gaifman graph and of the incidence graph, induced and non-induced tree-ordered minors, and generalized fundamental graphs. We provide characterizations of monadically dependent classes of tree-ordered weakly sparse $\sigma$-structures based on each of these constructions, some of them establishing unexpected bridges with sparsity theory. As an application, we prove that a class of tree-ordered weakly sparse structures is monadically dependent if and only if its sparsification is nowhere-dense. Moreover, the sparsification transduction translates boundedness of clique-width and linear clique-width into boundedness of tree-width and path-width. We also prove that first-order model checking is not fixed parameter tractable on independent hereditary classes of tree-ordered weakly sparse graphs (assuming $\mathsf{AW}[*]\neq \mathsf{FPT}$) and give what we believe is the first model-theoretical characterization of classes of graphs excluding a minor, thus opening a new perspective of structural graph theory.