Quantified Equality Constraints

Abstract

An equality template (also equality constraint language) is a relational structure with infinite universe whose relations can be defined by boolean combinations of equalities. We prove a complete complexity classification for quantified constraint satisfaction problems (QCSPs) over equality templates: these problems are in L (decidable in logarithmic space), NP-complete, or PSPACE-complete. To establish our classification theorem we combine methods from universal algebra with concepts from model theory.