Logical Methods in Computer Science Vol. 2 (2:2) 2006, pp. 1–46 Submitted Jun. 24, 2005 www.lmcs-online.org Published Mar. 23, 2006 THE MONADIC SECOND-ORDER LOGIC OF GRAPHS XVI: CANONICAL GRAPH DECOMPOSITIONS BRUNO COURCELLE LaBRI, Bordeaux 1 University, 33405 Talence, France e-mail address:
[email protected] Abstract. This article establishes that the split decomposition of graphs introduced by Cunnigham, is definable in Monadic Second-Order Logic.This result is actually an instance of a more general result covering canonical graph decompositions like the modular decom- position and the Tutte decomposition of 2-connected graphs into 3-connected components. As an application, we prove that the set of graphs having the same cycle matroid as a given 2-connected graph can be defined from this graph by Monadic Second-Order formulas. 1. Introduction Hierarchical graph decompositions are useful for the construction of efficient algorithms, and also because they give structural descriptions of the considered graphs. Cunningham and Edmonds have proposed in [18] a general framework for defining decompositions of graphs, hypergraphs and matroids. This framework covers many types of decompositions. Of particular interest is the split decomposition of directed and undirected graphs defined by Cunningham in [17]. A hierarchical decomposition of a certain type is canonical if, up to technical details like vertex labellings, there is a unique decomposition of a given graph (or hypergraph, or matroid) of this type. To take well-known examples concerning graphs, the modular decom- position is canonical, whereas, except in particular cases, there is no useful canonical notion of tree-decomposition of minimal tree-width.