Twin-width V: linear minors, modular counting, and matrix multiplication

Abstract: We continue developing the theory around the twin-width of totally ordered binary structures, initiated in the previous paper of the series. We first introduce the notion of parity and linear minors of a matrix, which consists of iteratively replacing consecutive rows or consecutive columns with a linear combination of them. We show that a matrix class has bounded twin-width if and only if its linear-minor closure does not contain all matrices. We observe that the fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for first-order model checking on structures given with an $O(1)$-sequence (certificate of bounded twin-width) and the fact that first-order transductions of bounded twin-width classes have bounded twin-width, both established in Twin-width I, extend to first-order logic with modular counting quantifiers. We make explicit a win-win argument obtained as a by-product of Twin-width IV, and somewhat similar to bidimensionality, that we call rank-bidimensionality. Armed with the above-mentioned extension to modular counting, we show that the twin-width of the product of two conformal matrices $A, B$ over a finite field is bounded by a function of the twin-width of $A$, of $B$, and of the size of the field. Furthermore, if $A$ and $B$ are $n \times n$ matrices of twin-width $d$ over $\mathbb F_q$, we show that $AB$ can be computed in time $O_{d,q}(n² \log n)$. We finally present an ad hoc algorithm to efficiently multiply two matrices of bounded twin-width, with a single-exponential dependence in the twin-width bound: If the inputs are given in a compact tree-like form, called twin-decomposition (of width $d$), then two $n \times n$ matrices $A, B$ over $\mathbb F_2$, a twin-decomposition of $AB$ with width $2<sup>{d+o(d)}$ can be computed in time $4<sup>{d+o(d)}n$ (resp. $4<sup>{d+o(d)}n<sup>{1+\varepsilon}$), and entries queried in doubly-logarithmic (resp. constant) time.