Equi-Rank Homomorphism Preservation Theorem on Finite Structures

The Homomorphism Preservation Theorem (HPT) of classical model theory states that a first-order sentence is preserved under homomorphisms if, and only if, it is equivalent to an existential-positive sentence. This theorem remains valid when restricted to finite structures, as demonstrated by the author in [33, 34] via distinct model-theoretic and circuit-complexity based proofs. In this paper, we present a third (and significantly simpler) proof of the finitary HPT based on a generalized Cai-Fürer-Immerman construction. This method establishes a tight correspondence between syntactic parameters of a homomorphism-preserved sentence (quantifier rank, variable width, alternation height) and structural parameters of its minimal models (tree-width, tree-depth, decomposition height). Consequently, we prove a conjectured “equi-rank” version of the finitary HPT. In contrast, previous versions of the finitary HPT possess additional properties, but incur blow-ups in the quantifier rank of the equivalent existential-positive sentence.