Janus-faces of temporal constraint languages: a dichotomy of expressivity

Abstract: The Bodirsky-K\'ara classification of temporal constraint languages stands as one of the earliest and most seminal complexity classifications within infinite-domain Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs), yet it remains one of the most mysterious in terms of algorithms and algebraic invariants for the tractable cases. We show that those temporal languages which do not pp-construct EVERYTHING (and thus by the classification are solvable in polynomial time) have, in fact, very limited expressive power as measured by the graphs and hypergraphs they can pp-interpret. This limitation yields many previously unknown algebraic consequences, while also providing new, uniform proofs for known invariance properties. In particular, we show that such temporal constraint languages admit $4$-ary pseudo-Siggers polymorphisms -- a result that sustains the possibility that the existence of such polymorphisms extends to the much broader context of the Bodirsky-Pinsker conjecture.