3,819 research outputs found
The complexity of conservative finite-valued CSPs
We study the complexity of valued constraint satisfaction problems (VCSP). A
problem from VCSP is characterised by a \emph{constraint language}, a fixed set
of cost functions over a finite domain. An instance of the problem is specified
by a sum of cost functions from the language and the goal is to minimise the
sum. We consider the case of so-called \emph{conservative} languages; that is,
languages containing all unary cost functions, thus allowing arbitrary
restrictions on the domains of the variables. This problem has been studied by
Bulatov [LICS'03] for -valued languages (i.e. CSP), by
Cohen~\etal\ (AIJ'06) for Boolean domains, by Deineko et al. (JACM'08) for
-valued cost functions (i.e. Max-CSP), and by Takhanov (STACS'10) for
-valued languages containing all finite-valued unary cost
functions (i.e. Min-Cost-Hom).
We give an elementary proof of a complete complexity classification of
conservative finite-valued languages: we show that every conservative
finite-valued language is either tractable or NP-hard. This is the \emph{first}
dichotomy result for finite-valued VCSPs over non-Boolean domains.Comment: 15 page
On tractability and congruence distributivity
Constraint languages that arise from finite algebras have recently been the
object of study, especially in connection with the Dichotomy Conjecture of
Feder and Vardi. An important class of algebras are those that generate
congruence distributive varieties and included among this class are lattices,
and more generally, those algebras that have near-unanimity term operations. An
algebra will generate a congruence distributive variety if and only if it has a
sequence of ternary term operations, called Jonsson terms, that satisfy certain
equations.
We prove that constraint languages consisting of relations that are invariant
under a short sequence of Jonsson terms are tractable by showing that such
languages have bounded relational width
Generalising tractable VCSPs defined by symmetric tournament pair multimorphisms
We study optimisation problems that can be formulated as valued constraint
satisfaction problems (VCSP). A problem from VCSP is characterised by a
\emph{constraint language}, a fixed set of cost functions taking finite and
infinite costs over a finite domain. An instance of the problem is specified by
a sum of cost functions from the language and the goal is to minimise the sum.
We are interested in \emph{tractable} constraint languages; that is, languages
that give rise to VCSP instances solvable in polynomial time. Cohen et al.
(AIJ'06) have shown that constraint languages that admit the MJN multimorphism
are tractable. Moreover, using a minimisation algorithm for submodular
functions, Cohen et al. (TCS'08) have shown that constraint languages that
admit an STP (symmetric tournament pair) multimorphism are tractable.
We generalise these results by showing that languages admitting the MJN
multimorphism on a subdomain and an STP multimorphisms on the complement of the
subdomain are tractable. The algorithm is a reduction to the algorithm for
languages admitting an STP multimorphism.Comment: 14 page
The Complexity of Quantified Constraint Satisfaction: Collapsibility, Sink Algebras, and the Three-Element Case
The constraint satisfaction probem (CSP) is a well-acknowledged framework in
which many combinatorial search problems can be naturally formulated. The CSP
may be viewed as the problem of deciding the truth of a logical sentence
consisting of a conjunction of constraints, in front of which all variables are
existentially quantified. The quantified constraint satisfaction problem (QCSP)
is the generalization of the CSP where universal quantification is permitted in
addition to existential quantification. The general intractability of these
problems has motivated research studying the complexity of these problems under
a restricted constraint language, which is a set of relations that can be used
to express constraints.
This paper introduces collapsibility, a technique for deriving positive
complexity results on the QCSP. In particular, this technique allows one to
show that, for a particular constraint language, the QCSP reduces to the CSP.
We show that collapsibility applies to three known tractable cases of the QCSP
that were originally studied using disparate proof techniques in different
decades: Quantified 2-SAT (Aspvall, Plass, and Tarjan 1979), Quantified
Horn-SAT (Karpinski, Kleine B\"{u}ning, and Schmitt 1987), and Quantified
Affine-SAT (Creignou, Khanna, and Sudan 2001). This reconciles and reveals
common structure among these cases, which are describable by constraint
languages over a two-element domain. In addition to unifying these known
tractable cases, we study constraint languages over domains of larger size
Generalized Majority-Minority Operations are Tractable
Generalized majority-minority (GMM) operations are introduced as a common
generalization of near unanimity operations and Mal'tsev operations on finite
sets. We show that every instance of the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP),
where all constraint relations are invariant under a (fixed) GMM operation, is
solvable in polynomial time. This constitutes one of the largest tractable
cases of the CSP
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