Abstract. Two graphs with adjacency matrices A and B are isomorphic if there exists a permutation matrix P for which the identity P T AP = B holds. Multiplying through by P and relaxing the permutation matrix to a doubly stochastic matrix leads to the linear programming relaxation known as fractional isomorphism. We show that the levels of the Sherali-Adams (SA) hierarchy of linear programming relaxations applied to fractional isomorphism interleave in power with the levels of a well-known color-refinement heuristic for graph isomorphism called the Weisfeiler-Lehman algorithm, or, equivalently, with the levels of indistinguishability in a logic with counting quantifiers and a bounded number of variables. This tight connection has quite striking consequences. For example, it follows immediately from a deep result of Grohe in the context of logics with counting quantifiers that a fixed number of levels of SA suffice to determine isomorphism of planar and minor-free graphs. We also offer applications in both finite model theory and polyhedral combinatorics. First, we show that certain properties of graphs, such as that of having a flow circulation of a prescribed value, are definable in the infinitary logic with counting with a bounded number of variables. Second, we exploit a lower bound construction due to Cai, Fürer, and Immerman in the context of counting logics to give simple explicit instances that show that the SA relaxations of the vertex-cover and cut polytopes do not reach their integer hulls for up to Ω(n) levels, where n is the number of vertices in the graph.Key words. first-order logic, counting quantifiers, linear programming, Weisfeiler-Lehman algorithm, graph isomorphism, combinatorial optimization AMS subject classifications. 68Q17, 68Q19, 52B12, 05C60, 05C72, 03C80 DOI. 10.1137/120867834 1. Introduction. Let A and B be the adjacency matrices of two labeled graphs on {1, . . . , n}. The two graphs being isomorphic is equivalent to the existence of a permutation matrix P for which the relation P T AP = B holds. Multiplying both sides by P gives the equivalent condition AP = PB. At this point a linear programming relaxation suggests itself: relax the condition that P is a permutation matrix to a doubly stochastic matrix. How much coarser is this than actual isomorphism?The concept of fractional isomorphism as defined in the preceding paragraph falls within the framework of linear programming relaxations of combinatorial problems. Other types of relaxations of isomorphism include the color-refinement method called the Weisfeiler-Lehman (WL) algorithm. In this algorithm the vertices of the graphs are classified according to their degree, then according to the multiset of degrees of their neighbors, and so on until a fixed point is achieved. If the two graphs get partitions with different parameters, the graphs are definitely not isomorphic. As it turns out, fractional isomorphism and color refinement yield one and the same relaxation: it was shown by Ramana, Scheinerman, and Ullman [31] that two graphs