2. Preliminaries

We require a basic knowledge of standard notions from classical complexity theory (Papadimitriou Reference Papadimitriou1994). The classical complexity classes we encounter mostly in this work are ${{\mathbf{P}}}$ and $ {{\mathbf{NP}}}$ together with their respective completeness notions, employing polynomial time many-one reductions ( ${{\leq^{{{\mathbf{P}}}}_m}}$ ). Moreover, we assume the reader is familiar with the basic first-order (predicate) logic (Ebbinghaus and Flum Reference Ebbinghaus and Flum1995). In the following, we define a few important classes of first-order formulas that are relevant to the results in this work.

FO-Formula Classes. The class of all first-order formulas is denoted by ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ . Let $\tau$ be a relational vocabulary and $R\in \tau$ be a relation symbol of arity r. An atomic formula is a formula of the form $x = y$ or $R(x_1,\dots, x_r)$ . A literal is an atomic or a negated atomic formula. A quantifier-free formula is a formula that contains no quantifiers and a formula is in negation normal form (NNF) if the negation symbols occurs only front of atoms. A formula $\varphi$ is in prenex normal form if $\varphi$ has the form $Q_1x_1\dots Q_nx_n \psi$ , where $\psi$ is quantifier free and $Q_1,\dots,Q_n\in\{\exists, \forall\}$ . The classes ${{\mathrm{\Sigma}_{0}}}$ and ${{\mathrm{\Pi}_{0}}}$ both consist of quantifier-free formulas. Then, for $t\geq 0 $ , the class ${{\mathrm{\Sigma}_{t+1}}}$ includes all formulas of the form $\exists x_1\dots \exists x_\ell \varphi$ , where $\varphi\in {{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t}}}$ . Similarly, ${{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t+1}}}$ includes all formulas of the form $\forall x_1\dots \forall x_\ell \varphi$ , where $\varphi\in {{\mathrm{\Sigma}_{t}}}$ .

Fagin Definability. The first-order variables range over individual elements of the universe. In second-order logic, one also quantifies relation variables which range over relations on the universe. We now introduce first-order formulas where we also allow relation variables. Let $\tau$ be a vocabulary, $X_i$ for $i\leq n$ be free relation variables of arity $s_i$ and $\varphi(X_1,\dots, X_n)$ be a ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -formula with free relation variables in $\tau$ . Notice that $\varphi(X_1,\dots, X_n)$ does not contain free first-order variables. Moreover, let $\mathcal{A}$ be a $\tau$ -structure and $S_i\subseteq A^{s_i}$ be relations over $\mathcal{A}$ for $i\leq n$ . Then we say that the tuple $\bar S = (S_1,\dots,S_n)$ is a solution for $\varphi$ in $\mathcal{A}$ if $\mathcal{A} \models \varphi(\bar S)$ . We call the following decision problem, the problem Fagin-defined by $\varphi$ .

Let ${{\mathrm{\Theta}}}\subseteq{{\mathcal{FO}}} $ be a class of formulas, then by $\mathrm{FD}\text-{{\mathrm{\Theta}}}$ we denote the class of all problems $\mathrm{FD}_\varphi$ such that $\varphi\in {{\mathrm{\Theta}}}$ . The following result regarding ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ is known.

Next we introduce the following weighted version of Fagin definabilty, where we restrict our solution to have a specific size for a single free relation symbol S of arity s. Notice that the inclusion of a single free relation variable is without loss of generality as allowing more than one such variables does not increase the complexity (see Flum and Grohe Reference Flum and Grohe2006, p.87).

As before, for a class ${{\mathrm{\Theta}}}\subseteq{{\mathcal{FO}}} $ of formulas, we denote by $\mathrm{WD}\text-{{\mathrm{\Theta}}}$ the class of all problems $\mathrm{WD}_\varphi$ such that $\varphi\in {{\mathrm{\Theta}}}$ .

Example 2. We assume standard graph theoretic notation and consider loop-free graphs. The problem is defined as follows. Given a graph $\mathcal{G}\mathrel{\mathop:}= (V,E)$ and $k\in \mathbb N$ . Is there a set $S\subseteq V$ such that $|S|=k$ and $(u,v)\in E$ for every $x,y\in S$ ? Then is $\mathrm{WD}_{\varphi_c}$ , where

$ \varphi_c(X) \mathrel{\mathop:}= \forall x\forall y \bigl((X(x)\land X(y)\land x\not=y)\rightarrow E(xy)\bigr). $

Consequently, is in $\mathrm{WD}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{1}}}$ .

Moreover, Let be the problem to determine if a graph $\mathcal{G}$ contains a set $S\subseteq V$ such that $|S|=k$ and every vertex in $V\setminus S$ is incident to some vertex in S? Then is in $\mathrm{WD}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{2}}}$ since the problem is $\mathrm{WD}_{\varphi_d}$ , where

$ \varphi_d(X) \mathrel{\mathop:}= \forall x\exists y \bigl(X(y)\land (E(x,y) \lor x=y)\bigr). $

Parameterized Complexity Theory. A parameterized problem (PP) $P\subseteq\Sigma^*\times\mathbb N$ is a subset of the cross-product of an alphabet and the natural numbers. For an instance $(x,k)\in\Sigma^*\times\mathbb N$ , k is called the (value of the) parameter. A parameterization is a polynomial-time computable function that maps a value from $x\in\Sigma^*$ to its corresponding $k\in\mathbb N$ . The problem P is said to be fixed-parameter tractable (or in the class ${{\mathbf{FPT}}}$ ) if there exists a deterministic algorithm $\mathcal A$ and a computable function f such that for all $(x,k)\in\Sigma^*\times \mathbb N$ , algorithm $\mathcal A$ correctly decides the membership of $(x,k)\in P$ and runs in time $f(k)\cdot|x|^{O(1)}$ . The problem P belongs to the class ${{\mathbf{XP}}}$ if $\mathcal A$ runs in time $|x|^{f(k)}$ on a deterministic machine. Abusing a little bit of notation, we write $\mathcal C$ -machine for the type of machines that decide languages in the class $\mathcal C$ , and we will say a function f is $\mathcal C$ -computable if it can be computed by a machine on which the resource bounds of the class $\mathcal C$ are imposed. The class ${{\mathbf{para}}}{{\mathbf{NP}}}$ includes problems decidable by a nondeterministic algorithm $\mathcal A$ which runs in time $f(k)\cdot|x|^{O(1)}$ for some computable function f. One can define a parameterized complexity class ${{\mathbf{para}}}\mathcal C$ corresponding to a complexity class $\mathcal C$ via a precomputation on the parameter.

Notice that ${{\mathbf{para}}}\mathbf{P}={{\mathbf{FPT}}}$ and the two definitions of ${{\mathbf{para}}}{{\mathbf{NP}}}$ are equivalent.

A problem P is in the complexity class ${{\mathbf{W[P]}}}$ , if it can be decided by a NTM running in time $f(k)\cdot|x|^{O(1)}$ steps, with at most g(k)-many nondeterministic steps, where f,g are computable functions. Moreover, ${{\mathbf{W[P]}}}$ is contained in the intersection of ${{\mathbf{para}}}{{\mathbf{NP}}}$ and ${{\mathbf{XP}}}$ (for details see the textbook of Flum and Grohe Reference Flum and Grohe2006).

Let $c\in\mathbb N$ and $P\subseteq\Sigma^*\times\mathbb N$ be a PP, then the c-slice of P, written as $P_c$ is defined as $P_c\:=\{\,(x,k)\in\Sigma^*\times\mathbb N\mid k=c\,\}$ . Notice that $P_c$ is a classical problem then.

• for all $(x,k)\in\Sigma^*\times\mathbb N$ we have that $(x,k)\in P\Leftrightarrow f(x,k)\in Q$ ,

• there exists a computable function $g\colon\mathbb N\to\mathbb N$ such that for all $(x,k)\in\Sigma^*\times\mathbb N$ and $f(x,k)=(x',k')$ we have that $k'\leq g(k)$ .

Finally, in order to show that a problem P is ${{\mathbf{para}}}\mathcal C$ -hard for some complexity class $\mathcal C$ , it is sufficient to prove that for some $c\in \mathbb N$ , the slice $P_c$ is $\mathcal C$ -hard in the classical setting (Flum and Grohe Reference Flum and Grohe2006, Thm. 2.14).

To define the complexity classes in ${{\mathbf{W}}}$ -hierarchy, the parameterized version of the problem $\mathrm{WD}_\varphi$ is now defined as follows.

The complexity classes of the ${{\mathbf{W}}}$ -hierarchy are characterized via the following definition.

Alternatively, the ${{\mathbf{W}}}$ -hierarchy can be defined via the weighted satisfiability problem for propositional formulas. Let I be a nonempty index set and $d\in\mathbb N$ . Consider the following special subclasses of propositional formulas:

$\begin{array}{@{}r@{\,}c@{\,}l@{}} \Gamma_{0, d} & =& \{\ell_1\land\dots\land \ell_c \mid \ell_1,\dots, \ell_c \text{ are literals and }c\leq d \},\\ \Delta_{0, d} & = & \{\ell_1\lor\dots\lor \ell_c \mid \ell_1,\dots, \ell_c \text{ are literals and }c\leq d \},\\ \Gamma_{t, d} & = & \left\{\,\bigwedge\limits_{i\in I} \alpha_i \,\middle|\, \alpha_i \in \Delta_{t-1,d} \text{ for } i \in I\, \right\}, \\ \Delta_{t, d} &= & \left\{\,\bigvee\limits_{i\in I} \alpha_i \,\middle|\, \alpha_i \in \Gamma_{t-1,d} \text{ for } i \in I\, \right\}.\end{array}$

Finally, $\Gamma^{+}_{t,d}$ (resp. $\Gamma^{-}_{t,d}$ ) denote the class of all positive (negative) formulas in $\Gamma_{t,d}$ .

The parameterized weighted satisfiability problem ( $\text{p-} {{\mathrm{WSAT}}}$ ) for propositional formulas is defined as below. The parameter weight of an assignment s is the number of variables mapped to 1 by s.

The classes of the $\mathbf{W}$ -hierarchy are defined equivalently in terms of these problems.

• $\text{p-}{{\mathrm{WSAT}(\Gamma^+_{t,1},)}}$ if t is even and $\text{p-}{{\mathrm{WSAT}(\Gamma^-_{t,1})}}{}$ if t is odd.

• $\text{p-}{{\mathrm{WSAT}(\Gamma_{t,d})}}{}$ for every $t,d\geq 1$ .

Fig. 1 draws the complexity landscape with complete problems in parameterized complexity that are relevant.

Figure 1. Landscape of relevant parameterized complexity classes with complete problems. The definition of several of these complete problems is mentioned in the relevant proofs.

Team-based Logics. We assume basic familiarity with predicate logic (Ebbinghaus and Flum Reference Ebbinghaus and Flum1995). We consider first-order vocabularies $\tau$ that are sets of function symbols and relation symbols with an equality symbol $=$ . Let VAR be a countably infinite set of first-order variables. Terms over $\tau$ are defined in the usual way, and the set of well-formed formulas of first-order logic ( ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ ) in negation normal form is defined by the following EBNF:

$\psi := t_1 =t_2\mid R(t_1,\dots,t_k)\mid \lnot R(t_1,\dots,t_k)\mid f(t_1,\dots,t_k)\mid \psi\land\psi\mid \psi\lor\psi\mid \exists x\psi\mid \forall x\psi,$

where $t_i$ are terms $1\leq i\leq k$ , R is a k-ary relation symbol from $\sigma$ , $k\in\mathbb N$ , and $x\in\mathrm{VAR}$ . If $\psi$ is a formula, then we use $\mathrm{VAR}(\psi)$ for its set of variables, and ${{\mathrm{Fr}}}(\psi)$ for its set of free variables. We evaluate ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -formulas in $\tau$ -structures, which are pairs of the form $\mathcal{A}=(A,\tau^\mathcal{A})$ , where A is the domain of $\mathcal{A}$ (when clear from the context, we write A instead of $\mathrm{dom}(\mathcal{A})$ ), and $\tau^\mathcal{A}$ interprets the function and relational symbols in the usual way (e.g., $t^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle=s(x)$ if $t=x\in\mathrm{VAR}$ ). If $\mathbf t=(t_1,\dots,t_n)$ is a tuple of terms for $n\in\mathbb N$ , then we write $\mathbf t^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle$ for $(t_1^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle, \dots, t_n^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle)$ .

Dependence logic ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ extends ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ by dependence atoms of the form ${\mathsf{dep}}({\mathbf{t}};{{u}})$ where $\mathbf t$ and $\mathbf u$ are tuples of terms. Inclusion logic ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ is obtained by adding to ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ the inclusion atoms of the form ${\mathbf{t}}\subseteq\mathbf{u}$ for tuples $\mathbf t$ and $ \mathbf u$ of terms. Finally, independence logic ${{\mathcal{FO}(\bot)}}$ extends ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ by independence atoms of the form ${\mathbf{t}}\bot_{\mathbf{v}}\mathbf{u}$ for tuples $\mathbf t, \mathbf u$ , and $\mathbf v$ of terms. We call expressions of the kind $t_1=t_2, R(\mathbf t),{\mathsf{dep}}({\mathbf{t}};\,{{u}}),{\mathbf{t}}\subseteq\mathbf{u}$ and ${\mathbf{t}}\bot_{\mathbf{v}}\mathbf{u}$ atomic formulas.

The semantics is defined through the concept of a team. Let $\mathcal{A}$ be a structure and $X\subseteq\mathrm{VAR}$ , then an assignment s is a mapping $s\colon X\rightarrow A$ .

For a team T with domain $X\supseteq Y$ define its restriction to Y as $T{\upharpoonright} Y\:=\{\,s{\upharpoonright} Y \mid s\in T\,\}$ . If $s\colon X\to A$ is an assignment and $x\in\mathrm{VAR}$ is a variable, then $s^x_a\colon X\cup\{x\}\to A$ is the assignment that maps x to a and $y\in X\setminus\{x\}$ to s(y). Let T be a team in $\mathcal{A}$ with domain X. Then any function $f\colon T\to \mathcal{P}(A)\setminus\{\emptyset\}$ can be used as a supplementing function of T to extend or modify T to the supplemented team $T^x_f\:=\{\,s^x_a\mid s\in T,a\in f(s)\,\}$ . For the case $f(s)=A$ is the constant function, we simply write $T^x_\mathcal{A}$ for $T^x_f$ . The semantics of formulas is defined as follows.

Definition 8. Let $\tau$ be a vocabulary, $\mathcal{A}$ be a $\tau$ -structure and T be a team over $\mathcal{A}$ with domain $X\subseteq\mathrm{VAR}$ . Then,

\begin{alignat*}{3} & \mathcal{A},T\models t_1=t_2 && \;\text{ iff }\; && \forall s\in T: t_1^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle=t_2^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle,\\ & \mathcal{A},T\models t_1\neq t_2 && \;\text{ iff }\; && \forall s\in T: t_1^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle\neq t_2^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle,\\ & \mathcal{A},T\models R(t_1,\dots,t_n) && \;\text{ iff }\; && \forall s\in T: (t_1^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle,\dots,t_n^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle)\in R^{\mathcal{A}},\\ & \mathcal{A},T\models \neg R(t_1,\dots,t_n) && \;\text{ iff }\; && \forall s\in T: (t_1^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle,\dots,t_n^\mathcal{A}\langle s\rangle)\not\in R^{\mathcal{A}},\\ & \mathcal{A},T\models {\mathsf{dep}}({\mathbf{t}};{{u}}) && \;\text{ iff }\; && \forall s_1, s_2\in T: \mathbf t^\mathcal{A}\langle s_1\rangle=\mathbf t^\mathcal{A}\langle s_2\rangle \implies \mathbf u^\mathcal{A}\langle s_1\rangle=\mathbf u^\mathcal{A}\langle s_2\rangle ,\\ & \mathcal{A},T\models {\mathbf{t}}\subseteq\mathbf{u} && \;\text{ iff }\; && \forall s_1\in T, \exists s_2\in T: \mathbf t^\mathcal{A}\langle s_1\rangle=\mathbf u^\mathcal{A}\langle s_2\rangle, \\ & \mathcal{A},T\models {\mathbf{t}}\bot_{\mathbf{v}}\mathbf{u} && \;\text{ iff }\; && \forall s_1, s_2\in T: \mathbf v^\mathcal{A}\langle s_1\rangle=\mathbf v^\mathcal{A}\langle s_2\rangle \text{ then } \exists s_3\in T: \\ & && && \mathbf {vt}^\mathcal{A}\langle s_3\rangle=\mathbf {vt}^\mathcal{A}\langle s_1\rangle \text{ and } \mathbf {u}^\mathcal{A}\langle s_3\rangle=\mathbf {u}^\mathcal{A}\langle s_2\rangle,\\ & \mathcal{A},T\models \varphi_0\land \varphi_1 && \;\text{ iff }\; && \mathcal{A},T\models \varphi_0 \text{ and } \mathcal{A},T\models \varphi_1, \\ & \mathcal{A},T\models \varphi_0\lor \varphi_1 && \;\text{ iff }\; && \exists T_0\exists T_1: T_0\cup T_1=T \text{ and } \mathcal{A},T_i\models \varphi_i \, \text{ for }i =0,1,\\ & \mathcal{A},T\models\exists x\varphi && \;\text{ iff }\; && \mathcal{A},T^x_f\models\varphi\text{ for some }f\colon T\to \mathcal{P}(A)\setminus\{\emptyset\},\\ & \mathcal{A},T\models\forall x\varphi && \;\text{ iff }\; && \mathcal{A},T^x_\mathcal{A}\models\varphi.\end{alignat*}

For a structure $\mathcal{A}$ and a team T over X in $\mathcal{A}$ , we let $\mathrm{rel}(T)$ denote the relation defined by T. That is, $\mathrm{rel}(T)\mathrel{\mathop:}= \{\,\mathbf{a}\mid s(\mathbf{x})=\mathbf{a},s\in T \,\}$ . Moreover, we say that a formula $\varphi$ is flat if for any team T over ${{\mathrm{Fr}}}(\varphi)$ we have that $\mathcal{A},T\models \varphi$ if and only if $\mathcal{A},\{s\}\models \varphi$ for every $s\in T$ . The ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -formulas satisfy this flatness property. Notice that, for ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -formulas, by singleton equivalence, team semantics and classical Tarski semantics coincide, i.e., $\mathcal{A},\{s\}\models \varphi$ if and only if $\mathcal{A}\models_s \varphi$ . Furthermore, note that $\mathcal{A},T\models \varphi$ for all $\varphi$ when $T=\emptyset$ (this is also called the empty team property). Finally, $\mathcal{C}$ -formulas for every $\mathcal{C}\in \{{{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}},{{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}},{{\mathcal{FO}(\bot)}}\}$ are local, that is, for a team T in $\mathcal{A}$ over domain X and a ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formula $\varphi$ , we have that $\mathcal{A},T\models\varphi$ if and only if $\mathcal{A},T{\upharpoonright}{{{\mathrm{Fr}}}(\varphi)}\models\varphi$ .

We now extend the formulas classes ( ${{\mathrm{\Sigma}_{t}}}$ and ${{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t}}}$ ) to the logics under consideration. To this end, ${{{{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t}}}}}\subseteq{{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ (resp., ${{{{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Sigma}_{t}}}}}$ ) denotes the collection of formulas $\varphi$ of the form $\varphi\mathrel{\mathop:}= Q_1x_1Q_2x_2\dots Q_tx_t\psi$ such that $\psi$ is a quantifier free ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formula, $Q_i\in \{\forall,\exists\}$ and $Q_1=\forall$ ( $Q_1=\exists$ ). In other words, $\varphi$ is a ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formula that starts with a $\forall$ -quantifier (resp., $\exists$ ) and has t-alternations of quantifiers. The classes ${{{{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t}}}}}\subseteq{{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ (resp., ${{{{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Sigma}_{t}}}}}$ ) for ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ and ${{{{\mathcal{FO}(\bot)}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t}}}}}\subseteq{{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ (resp., ${{{{\mathcal{FO}(\bot)}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Sigma}_{t}}}}}$ ) for ${{\mathcal{FO}(\bot)}}$ are similarly defined.

Weighted Team Definability. Now we introduce a novel version of the weighted definability problem for formulas in team-based logics. Let $\mathcal{C}\in \{{{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}},{{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}},{{\mathcal{FO}(\bot)}}\}$ , $\varphi$ be a fixed $\mathcal{C}$ -formula over free variables ${{\mathrm{Fr}}}(\varphi)$ and $k\in \mathbb N$ . Then given a structure $\mathcal{A}$ , the weighted-team definable problem $\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ asks if there is a team of size k for $\varphi$ over ${{\mathrm{Fr}}}(\varphi)$ in $\mathcal{A}$ .

Then the analogous parameterized version of $\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is defined as follows.

Note that the problem $\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ references the set of free variables ${{\mathrm{Fr}}}(\varphi)$ of the formula $\varphi$ . As a consequence, our parameterization is trivial for sentences since there are only two teams $\emptyset$ and $\{\emptyset\}$ with the empty team domain. As before, for a set ${{\mathrm{\Theta}}}\subseteq \mathcal{C}$ of formulas, we denote by $\mathrm{WT}\text-{{\mathrm{\Theta}}}$ the class of problems $\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ such that $\varphi\in {{\mathrm{\Theta}}}$ .

3. Complexity Results for Weighted Team Definability

3.1 First-order formulas

We begin our study of the complexity for $\text{p-} \mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ in the case $\varphi $ is a pure ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -formula under team semantics. Notice that the consequence of disallowing free relation variables in $\varphi$ is that $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is different than the weighted Fagin definability $\text{p-}\mathrm{WD}_\varphi$ . The following theorem establishes that the two problems are also different from the classical complexity theoretic point of view. Here, we assume basic familiarity about the circuit complexity classes $\mathrm{TC}^0$ and $\mathrm{AC}^0$ (for an introduction into this area, see the textbook of Vollmer Reference Vollmer1999).

Theorem 9. For any ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -formula $\varphi$ the problem $\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is in DLOGTIME-uniform $\mathrm{TC}^0$ .

Proof. The proof uses the flatness property of ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -formulas under team semantics:

$\mathcal{A},T\models \varphi \Leftrightarrow \forall s \in T: \ \mathcal{A}\models_s \varphi.$

It is well known that $\mathcal{A}\models_s \varphi$ can be decided by $\mathrm{AC}^0$ -circuits, whence the original question reduces to counting the number t of satisfying assignments of $\varphi$ and checking whether $t\ge k$ . This can be easily simulated by DLOGTIME-uniform $\mathrm{TC}^0$ circuits as we can hardcode all possible assignments into the circuit. Here, notice that $\varphi$ is fixed and thereby the number of free variables are fixed to some constant $c\in\mathbb N$ . Then, the input is the structure $\mathcal A$ of size n yielding $O(n^c)$ many assignments.

3.2 Inclusion logic

In this section, we relate the ${\mathbf{W}}$ -hierarchy and ${{\mathbf{W}[{{\mathbf{P}}}]}}$ to weighted team definability for inclusion logic formulas. First, observe that if $\varphi$ is an ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -sentence, then the problem $\text{p-} \mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is in ${{\mathbf{FPT}}}$ . This is due to the reason that the data complexity of fixed ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -sentences is in ${{\mathbf{P}}}$ (Galliani and Hella Reference Galliani, Hella and Della Rocca2013).

Theorem 10. Let $\varphi$ be an ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -sentence, then $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_{\varphi}$ is in ${{\mathbf{FPT}}}$ .

Proof. Recall that an ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -sentence $\varphi$ has a satisfying team T in $\mathcal{A}$ if and only if $\mathcal{A},\{\emptyset\}\models \varphi$ due to the locality property. Then $\varphi$ is true in $\mathcal{A}$ if and only if there is a team T such that $|T|=1$ and $\mathcal{A},T\models \varphi$ .

Now we prove, that $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ can already be ${{\mathbf{W}[1]}}$ -hard when $\varphi$ is a quantifier-free ${{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)$ -formula with free variables.

Theorem 11. There is a quantifier-free ${{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)$ -formula $\varphi$ such that the problem $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is ${{\mathbf{W}[1]}}$ -hard and in ${{\mathbf{W}[2]}}$ .

Proof. We present a reduction from the ${{\mathbf{W}[1]}}$ -complete problem to $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ such that $\varphi$ is a quantifier free ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -formula. Let $G\mathrel{\mathop:}= (V,E)$ be a graph and $k\in \mathbb N$ . Then, we let $\varphi\:= E(x,y)\wedge x\neq y\wedge y\subseteq x \wedge x\subseteq y$ . We claim that G has a clique of size k if and only if $G,T\models \varphi$ for a team T of size $(k^2-k)$ . It is easy to check that the existence of a k-clique is equivalent to $\varphi $ having a satisfying team of cardinality $k(k-1)$ . Clearly, a clique of size k contains $k(k-1)$ -many edges. Then the variables x and y take same values under each assignment in the resulting team which form a clique.

For containment in ${{\mathbf{W}[2]}}$ , it suffices to note that the formula $\varphi$ can be expressed as an ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -sentence $\psi(S)$ with a $\forall\exists$ -quantifier prefix where the auxiliary binary predicate S encodes the team T. This gives an ${{\mathbf{FPT}}}$ -reduction between $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ and $\text{p-}\mathrm{WD}_\psi$ . The result follows since ${{\mathbf{W}[2]}}\mathrel{\mathop:}=[\text{p-}\mathrm{WD}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{2}}}]$ .

This result can be strengthened to more general formulas as witnessed by the following corollary.

Corollary 12. For any quantifier-free ${{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)$ -formula $\varphi$ without $\lor$ , the problem $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is in ${{\mathbf{W}[2]}}$ .

Proof. For containment in ${{\mathbf{W}[2]}}$ , it suffices to note that the any quantifier-free formula without disjunction can be expressed as an ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -sentence $\psi(S)$ with a $\forall\exists$ -quantifier prefix where the auxiliary binary predicate S encodes the team T.

Theorem 13. There is an ${{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)$ -formula $\varphi$ with $\forall\exists$ -quantifier prefix for which the problem $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is ${{\mathbf{W}[2]}}$ -complete.

Proof. We present a reduction from the ${{\mathbf{W}[2]}}$ -complete problem to $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ such that $\varphi$ is a ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -formula with $\forall\exists$ -quantifier prefix. Let $G\mathrel{\mathop:}= (V,E)$ be a graph and $k\in \mathbb N$ . Then we let, $\varphi\mathrel{\mathop:}= \forall x \exists y (y\subseteq z \wedge ( E(x,y)\vee x=y))$ . It is straightforward to check that G has a dominating set of size k if and only if $G,T\models \varphi$ for a team T with domain $\{z\}$ of size k.

For ${{\mathbf{W}[2]}}$ -membership, notice that for all graphs G and teams T:

$G,T\models \varphi \Leftrightarrow (G, \mathrm{rel}(T))\models \varphi_d(X),$

where $\varphi_d(X)$ is the first-order sentence encoding the problem (see Example 2). A formal proof for the above equivalence is similar to the one given in Theorem 19.

The next lemma sets the stage for generalizing the two previous theorems to arbitrary levels of the ${\mathbf{W}}$ -hierarchy. To formulate the result, we assume an encoding of a formula $\psi \in \Gamma^{+}_{t,d}$ (and a truth assignment) by its syntax circuit defined as follows.

Definition 14. Let $\psi \in \Gamma^{+}_{t,d}$ be a propositional formula. We define the syntax circuit for $\psi$ by $A_{\psi}=(A,E,I,o)$ , where A is the set of subformulas of $\psi$ , E is the immediate subformula relation, $I\subseteq A$ are the variables of $\psi$ , and o is a constant symbol interpreted by $\psi$ . Moreover, we use a free relation variable $S\subseteq I$ to represent a truth assignment for the variables of $\psi$ .

Note that our encoding of $\psi$ works for any $t\in \mathbb N$ but for the definability result below t has to be fixed.

Lemma 15. Let $t\in \mathbb{N}$ . Then there exists a fixed formula $\varphi_t\in {{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)$ with one free variable z such that for all $\psi \in \Gamma^{+}_{t,d}$ and $k\ge 1$ : $\psi$ has a satisfying assignment of weight k if and only if $A_{\psi},T\models \varphi_t$ , for some team T of cardinality k.

Proof. Without loss of generality, we assume $d=1$ . For higher d-values, the presented proof easily generalizes via a conjunction/disjunction of arity d. By the results of Galliani and Hella (Reference Galliani, Hella and Della Rocca2013), it suffices to show that the required formula can be expressed by a first-order sentence $\theta(S)$ in which the relation symbol S occurs only positively. Then the existence of $\varphi_t(z)$ satisfying

(1) \begin{equation} A_{\psi},T\models \varphi_t \Leftrightarrow A_{\psi}\models \theta(S), \end{equation}

for all nonempty T and $\mathrm{rel}(T)=S$ follows. Note that $\theta(S)$ is not true under the assignment setting all the variables to false, but on the other hand $\varphi_t$ is always satisfied for $T=\emptyset$ by the empty team property. It is easy to check that, for an even t, $\theta(S)$ can be expressed as follows:

\begin{equation*}\theta(S)\:= \forall x_1\big(\neg E(o,x_1) \vee \exists x_2(E(x_1,x_2)\wedge \cdots Qx_t(E(x_{t-1},x_t)\wedge I(x_t)\wedge S(x_t) )\cdots \big). \end{equation*}

In the case t is odd the conjunction after $E(x_{t-1},x_t)$ has to be replaced by an implication. The relation symbol S has only one occurrence in the formula and it is positive. Now by Proposition 20 of Galliani and Hella (Reference Galliani, Hella and Della Rocca2013), there exists an ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -formula $\varphi_t$ such (1) holds for the sentence $\forall \vec{x}(S(\vec{x})\rightarrow \theta(S))$ for all $\mathcal{A}$ and all T. It is easy to see that $\theta(S)$ is equivalent with $\forall \vec{x}(S(\vec{x})\rightarrow \theta(S))$ modulo the cases when $S=\emptyset$ . In fact, it is straightforward to show that $\varphi_t$ can be obtained from $\theta(S)$ simply by replacing $S(x_t)$ by the inclusion atom $x_t\subseteq z$ . The proof then is analogous to the proof of Theorem 19.

Notice further that the translation of the formula $\theta$ to an ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -formula only introduces inclusion atoms and, in particular, does not require any further quantification. Therefore, the following corollary follows immediately from the proof in Lemma 15.

Corollary 16. Let $t\geq 2$ be even. Then there is an ${{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t}}}$ -formula ${\varphi_t}$ for which the problem $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_{\varphi_t}$ is ${{\mathbf{W}[t]}}$ -complete. Moreover, ${{\mathbf{W}[t]}} \subseteq [\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}\text-{{{{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t}}}}}]^{{{\mathbf{FPT}}}}$ for all even $t\geq 1$ and $\bigcup_{t\ge1}{{\mathbf{W}[t]}} \subseteq [\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}\text-{{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}]^{{{\mathbf{FPT}}}}$ .

Proof. For the ${{\mathbf{W}[t]}}$ -membership of $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_{\varphi_t}$ , notice that the translation between $\theta$ and the ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -formula $\varphi_t$ in the proof of Lemma 15 preserves a one-to-one correspondence between the solutions S for $\theta$ and satisfying teams T for $\varphi_t$ . In other words, $\theta$ has a solution of size k if and only if $\varphi_t$ has a satisfying team of size k. This yields ${{\mathbf{W}[t]}}$ -membership since $\theta\in {{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t}}}$ for each $t\geq 1$ (see Def. 5). The ${{\mathbf{W}[t]}}$ -hardness and the containment ${{\mathbf{W}[t]}} \subseteq [\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}\text-{{{{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{t}}}}}]^{{{\mathbf{FPT}}}}$ for all even $t\geq 1$ follows from Proposition 6.

We conclude this section by presenting the upper bounds for $\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ when $\varphi$ is an arbitrary $ {{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)$ -formula.

Theorem 17. $[\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}\text-{{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)]^{{{\mathbf{FPT}}}}\subseteq {{\mathbf{W}[{{\mathbf{P}}}]}}$ .

Proof. We prove this via the machine characterization of the class ${{\mathbf{W}[{{\mathbf{P}}}]}}$ , analogous to the proof for ${{\mathcal{FO}}}$ -formulas (Flum and Grohe Reference Flum and Grohe2006, Prop. 5.3). Let $\varphi$ be a ${{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)$ -formula with s free variables. An algorithm for the problem $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ proceeds as follows: Given a structure $\mathcal{A}$ and a k, nondeterministically guess k times an assignment (i.e., an s-tuple of elements of $\mathcal{A}$ ), then deterministically verify that the team T has cardinality k and $\mathcal{A},T\models \varphi$ . Guessing T requires $s \cdot k\cdot \log |A|$ nondeterministic bits, and the verification that $\mathcal{A},T\models \varphi$ can be done in deterministic polynomial time in $|A|$ (Galliani and Hella Reference Galliani, Hella and Della Rocca2013). Thus, $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is in ${{\mathbf{W}[{{\mathbf{P}}}]}}$ because the formula $\varphi$ is fixed and s is a constant. Moreover, the containment $[\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}\text-{{\mathcal{FO}}}(\subseteq)]^{{{\mathbf{FPT}}}}\subseteq {{\mathbf{W}[{{\mathbf{P}}}]}}$ holds since $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi\in {{\mathbf{W}[{{\mathbf{P}}}]}}$ for an arbitrary but fixed ${{\mathcal{FO}(\subseteq)}}$ -formula $\varphi$ .

3.3 Dependence logic

First observe that if $\varphi$ is a ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -sentence, then the problem $\text{p-} \mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is ${{\mathbf{para}}}{{\mathbf{NP}}}$ -complete. This is due to the reason that the data complexity of certain ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -sentences is already ${{\mathbf{NP}}}$ -complete (Väänänen Reference Väänänen2007).

Theorem 18. There is a ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -sentence $\varphi$ , such that the problem $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is ${{\mathbf{para}}}{{\mathbf{NP}}}$ -complete.

Proof. Recall that by the locality property a ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -sentence $\varphi$ is satisfied by all teams T over $\mathcal{A}$ if and only if $\mathcal{A},T^*\models \varphi$ for some nonempty team $T^*$ . Let now $\varphi$ be a sentence of dependence logic expressing an ${{\mathbf{NP}}}$ -complete problem. Then, for any fixed $k>0$ , the problem: given a model $\mathcal{A}$ , determine whether there exists a team with k elements satisfying $\varphi$ in $\mathcal{A}$ is ${{\mathbf{NP}}}$ -complete. This immediately implies that the problem $\text{p-} \mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is ${{\mathbf{para}}}{{\mathbf{NP}}}$ -complete.

Now, we relate the ${{\mathbf{W}}}$ -hierarchy to the weighted definability for dependence logic. This also settles the complexity of $\text{p-} \mathrm{WT}{}$ for ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formulas. In the following, we prove that already one universal quantifier is enough in ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ to define ${{\mathbf{W}[1]}}$ -complete problems.

Theorem 19. There is a ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formula $\varphi$ with only one universal quantifier such that the problem $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is ${{\mathbf{W}[1]}}$ -complete.

Proof. We present a reduction from the ${{\mathbf{W}[1]}}$ -complete problem $\text{p-}{{\small{IndependentSet}}}$ to $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ such that $\varphi$ is ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formula with only one universal quantifier. An input to is a graph $\mathcal{G}\mathrel{\mathop:}= (V,E)$ and a number $k\in \mathbb N$ . The question is whether there is a set S of size k in $\mathcal{G}$ such that $(a,b)\not \in E$ for every $a,b\in S$ . We let $\tau \mathrel{\mathop:}= \{N^1, P^1, I^2\}$ as our vocabulary where N,P are unary relations and I is a binary relation symbol. Moreover, the $\tau$ -structure $\mathcal{A}$ is such that: $\mathrm{dom}(\mathcal{A})\mathrel{\mathop:}= V\cup E$ , $N^\mathcal{A}\mathrel{\mathop:}= V, P^\mathcal{A}\mathrel{\mathop:}= E$ and $I^\mathcal{A}$ simulates the edge relation $E^\mathcal{G}$ . That is, $I\mathrel{\mathop:}=\{\,(a,b), (c,b)\mid a,c\in V,\text{ and } b\in P \text{ denotes the edge }(a,c)\in E\,\}$ . Finally, we define a ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formula $\varphi$ over a single free variable x as in the following.

$ \varphi(x) \mathrel{\mathop:}= \forall y \bigl(N(x) \land (\neg P(y)\lor \neg I(x,y) \lor {\mathsf{dep}}({y};{x})) \bigr) $

The correctness of our reduction is established via the following claim and also shows that the formula $\varphi$ is, in fact, equivalent to the familiar definition of independent sets via a ${{\mathrm{\Pi}_{1}}}$ -formula; hence, $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ is ${{\mathbf{W}[1]}}$ -complete.

Claim 20. There is a team T over x in $\mathcal{A}$ such that $|T|=k$ and $\mathcal{A},T\models \varphi$ if and only if there is an independent set in $\mathcal{G}$ of size k.

It remains to prove the claim. Suppose that $T=\{\,s_i\mid i\leq k\,\}$ is a team over x for $\varphi$ such that $s_i(x)=a_i$ for $a_i\in A$ . Moreover, let $T'=\{\,s_{i,j}\mid i\leq k,j\leq |\mathcal{A}|\,\}$ denote the supplemented team, that is, $s_{i,j}(x)=a_i$ and $s_{i,j}(y)=a_j$ for every $a_j\in \mathcal{A}$ . We prove that $S=\{a_i \mid \exists s\in T, s(x)=a_i \}$ constitutes an independent set in $\mathcal{G}$ . Let $a_i,a_j\in S$ , then there are $s_i,s_j \in T$ such that $s_i(x)=a_i$ , $s_j(x)=a_j$ . Suppose further that $(a_i,a_j)=e\in E^\mathcal{G}$ . Then, by our construction, there are $s_{i,j},s_{j,j}\in T'$ such that $s_{i,j}(xy)=a_ia_j$ and $s_{j,j}= a_ja_j$ . Moreover, the pair $s_{i,j},s_{j,j}$ cannot be in the subteam for the first disjunct since e is an edge and $T'\models P(e)$ ; it can also not belong to the subteam for the second disjunct since both $a_i$ and $a_j$ appear in the edge e. As a result, $s_{i,j},s_{j,j}$ must be in the subteam for the third disjunct, but then it cannot satisfy the atom ${\mathsf{dep}}({y};\,{x})$ since $s_{i,j}(y)= s_{j,j}(y)$ and $s_{i,j}(x)\not= s_{j,j}(x)$ . Consequently, $T'\not\models (\neg P(y)\lor \neg I(x,y)\lor {\mathsf{dep}}({y};{x}))$ and $T\not\models \varphi$ , which is a contradiction.

Conversely, if there is an independent set S of size k in $\mathcal{G}$ then we prove that $T\models \varphi(x)$ for $T =\{s_i \mid i\leq k, s_i(x)\in S\}$ . Clearly, the supplemented team T’ over $\{x,y\}$ has the following effect: for every y that corresponds to an edge e between elements $a_i,a_j\in A$ , at most one of its endpoint $a_i$ or $a_j$ is in T, which is the case if and only if S is in independent set.

Once again, we prove the next lemma that generalizes the previous theorem to arbitrary levels of the ${{\mathbf{W}}}$ -hierarchy using the circuit representation of a formula (Def. 14).

Lemma 21. Let $t\in \mathbb{N}$ . Then there exists a fixed formula $\varphi_t\in {{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ with one free variable z such that for all $\psi \in \Gamma^{-}_{t,d}$ and $k\ge 1$ : $\psi$ has a satisfying assignment of weight k if and only if $A_{\psi},T\models \varphi_t$ , for some team T of cardinality k.

Proof. Without loss of generality, we assume that $d=1$ . Otherwise, the presented proof will easily generalize to larger values of d by a disjunction/conjunction of arity d. By the results of Kontinen and Väänänen (Reference Kontinen and Väänänen2009), it suffices to show that the required formula can be expressed by a first-order sentence $\theta(S)$ in which the relation symbol S occurs only negatively. Then the existence of $\varphi_t(z)$ satisfying

(2) \begin{equation} A_{\psi},T\models \varphi_t \Leftrightarrow A_{\psi}\models \theta(S), \end{equation}

for all nonempty T and $\mathrm{rel}(T)=S$ follows. Now (for t even) it is easy to check that $\theta(S)$ can be expressed as follows:

\begin{equation*} \theta(S)\mathrel{\mathop:}= \forall x_1\big(\neg E(o,x_1) \vee \exists x_2(E(x_1,x_2)\wedge \cdots Qx_t(E(x_{t-1},x_t)\wedge I(x_t)\wedge \neg S(x_t) )\cdots \big). \end{equation*}

In the case t is odd the conjunction after $E(x_{t-1},x_t)$ has to be replaced by an implication. The relation symbol S appears only once in the formula and this appearance is negative.

Notice further that the translation of the formula $\theta$ to a ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formula only introduces dependence atoms and, in particular, does not require any further quantification. Therefore, the following corollary (with proof analogous to Corollary 16) follows. Recall that every dependence logic formula can be put into the $\forall\exists$ -normal form. As a result, tracking the quantifier prefix in Lemma 21 is not useful and we get the much stronger statement that the whole ${{\mathbf{W}}}$ -hierarchy is already contained in ${{{{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{2}}}}}$ . Yet, there is a trade-off one has to keep in mind while reaching this normal form: each existential quantifier (beyond the first) then induces a dependence atom in that case.

Corollary 22. Let $t\geq 1$ be odd. Then there is an ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{2}}}$ -formula $\varphi_t$ for which the problem $\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}_{\varphi_t}$ is ${{\mathbf{W}[t]}}$ -complete. Moreover, $\bigcup_{t\ge1}{{\mathbf{W}[t]}} \subseteq [\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}\text-{{{{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}\text-{{\mathrm{\Pi}_{2}}}}}]^{{{\mathbf{FPT}}}}$ .

Finally, ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ captures the class ${{\mathbf{para}}}{{\mathbf{NP}}}$ as established below.

Theorem 23. $[\text{p-}\mathrm{WT}\text-{{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}]^{{{\mathbf{FPT}}}}={{\mathbf{para}}}{{\mathbf{NP}}}$ .

Proof. Hardness follows from Theorem 18. For membership, we present the following nondeterministic algorithm that runs in polynomial time in the size of $\mathrm{dom}(\mathcal{A})$ . Notice that since the formula is fixed, we have fixed many connectives including disjunctions and quantifiers. The idea of the algorithm is that it guesses a team T of size k, as well as, a sequence $T_i$ for $i\in \mathbb N$ of teams which corresponds to the operations of supplementation and splits according to the formula $\varphi$ . In other words, let $\varphi=Q_1x_1Q_2x_2\dots Q_\ell x_\ell \psi$ be an ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formula, where $Q\in\{\forall,\exists\}$ and $\psi$ is quantifier free. Then the algorithm performs the following steps.

• Guess a team T of size k over ${{\mathrm{Fr}}}(\varphi)$ in $\mathcal{A}$ .

• For each $i\in \{\ell,\dots,1\}$ , guess a team $T_i$ over ${{\mathrm{Fr}}}(\varphi)\cup\{x_\ell,\dots,x_i\}$ in an inside-out order of quantification, such that: if $Q_i = \forall$ , then $T_i = P^x_{\mathcal{A}}$ and if $Q_i = \exists$ , then $T_i = P^x_{f}$ where $f\colon P\rightarrow \mathcal P(A)\setminus\emptyset $ and $P=T_{i+1}$ (we let $T_{\ell+1}=T$ ).Notice that $|T_i| =|T_{i+1}|$ if $Q_i=\exists$ (because ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ is downward closed) and $|T_i| =|T_{i+1}|\cdot |A|$ otherwise. As a result, we have that $|T_i| \leq k\cdot |A|^{\ell-i}$ and the size of the team $|T_1|$ is bounded by $k\cdot |A|^{\ell}$ .Once the team $T_1$ has been guessed, the algorithm needs to determine whether $T_1 \models \psi$ . Since the data complexity of ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ is still ${{\mathbf{NP}}}$ -complete for quantifier free formulas, this step is also nontrivial. Nevertheless, we can list recursively all the subformulas of $\psi$ in terms of its syntax tree. This helps in labeling a subteams of $T_1$ according to the connectives of $\psi$ .

• Guess subteams for subformulas in a top-down order of the syntax tree of $\psi$ . To be precise, let $T_\psi\mathrel{\mathop:}= T_1 $ . Then, for each subformula $\alpha = \beta\land \gamma$ of $\psi$ , let $T_\beta=T_\gamma = T_\alpha$ , and for each $\alpha = \beta\lor \gamma$ , let $T_\beta\cup T_\gamma = T_\alpha$ .Clearly, the size of the subteam $T_\alpha$ for each $\alpha$ is atmost $k\cdot |A|^\ell$ .

• Accept if $T_\alpha\models \alpha$ for each atomic subformula $\alpha$ of $\varphi$ .

Notice that for atomic formulas the truth evaluation $T_\alpha\models \alpha$ can be determined in polynomial time. Moreover, the intermediate steps including the verification of the team supplementation can also be performed in polynomial time. Finally, the correctness follows from the fact that the algorithm simulates the truth evaluation (see Def. 8) for $\varphi$ . This results in ${{\mathbf{para}}}{{\mathbf{NP}}}$ -membership of $\mathrm{WT}_\varphi$ for a fixed ${{\mathcal{FO}(\mathsf{dep})}}$ -formula $\varphi$ .