304 research outputs found
Minimal unsatisfiable formulas with bounded clause-variable difference are fixed-parameter tractable
Recognition of minimal unsatisfiable CNF formulas (unsatisfiable CNF formulas which become satisfiable if any clause is removed) is a classical DP-complete problem. It was shown recently that minimal unsatisfiable formulas with n variables and n+k clauses can be recognized in time . We improve this result and present an algorithm with time complexity ; hence the problem turns out to be fixed-parameter tractable (FTP) in the sense of Downey and Fellows (Parameterized Complexity, 1999). Our algorithm gives rise to a fixed-parameter tractable parameterization of the satisfiability problem: If for a given set of clauses F, the number of clauses in each of its subsets exceeds the number of variables occurring in the subset at most by k, then we can decide in time whether F is satisfiable; k is called the maximum deficiency of F and can be efficiently computed by means of graph matching algorithms. Known parameters for fixed-parameter tractable satisfiability decision are tree-width or related to tree-width. Tree-width and maximum deficiency are incomparable in the sense that we can find formulas with constant maximum deficiency and arbitrarily high tree-width, and formulas where the converse prevails
On SAT representations of XOR constraints
We study the representation of systems S of linear equations over the
two-element field (aka xor- or parity-constraints) via conjunctive normal forms
F (boolean clause-sets). First we consider the problem of finding an
"arc-consistent" representation ("AC"), meaning that unit-clause propagation
will fix all forced assignments for all possible instantiations of the
xor-variables. Our main negative result is that there is no polysize
AC-representation in general. On the positive side we show that finding such an
AC-representation is fixed-parameter tractable (fpt) in the number of
equations. Then we turn to a stronger criterion of representation, namely
propagation completeness ("PC") --- while AC only covers the variables of S,
now all the variables in F (the variables in S plus auxiliary variables) are
considered for PC. We show that the standard translation actually yields a PC
representation for one equation, but fails so for two equations (in fact
arbitrarily badly). We show that with a more intelligent translation we can
also easily compute a translation to PC for two equations. We conjecture that
computing a representation in PC is fpt in the number of equations.Comment: 39 pages; 2nd v. improved handling of acyclic systems, free-standing
proof of the transformation from AC-representations to monotone circuits,
improved wording and literature review; 3rd v. updated literature,
strengthened treatment of monotonisation, improved discussions; 4th v. update
of literature, discussions and formulations, more details and examples;
conference v. to appear LATA 201
A New Lower Bound on the Maximum Number of Satisfied Clauses in Max-SAT and its Algorithmic Applications
A pair of unit clauses is called conflicting if it is of the form ,
. A CNF formula is unit-conflict free (UCF) if it contains no pair
of conflicting unit clauses. Lieberherr and Specker (J. ACM 28, 1981) showed
that for each UCF CNF formula with clauses we can simultaneously satisfy at
least \pp m clauses, where \pp =(\sqrt{5}-1)/2. We improve the
Lieberherr-Specker bound by showing that for each UCF CNF formula with
clauses we can find, in polynomial time, a subformula with clauses
such that we can simultaneously satisfy at least \pp m+(1-\pp)m'+(2-3\pp)n"/2
clauses (in ), where is the number of variables in which are not in
.
We consider two parameterized versions of MAX-SAT, where the parameter is the
number of satisfied clauses above the bounds and . The
former bound is tight for general formulas, and the later is tight for UCF
formulas. Mahajan and Raman (J. Algorithms 31, 1999) showed that every instance
of the first parameterized problem can be transformed, in polynomial time, into
an equivalent one with at most variables and clauses. We improve
this to variables and clauses. Mahajan and Raman
conjectured that the second parameterized problem is fixed-parameter tractable
(FPT). We show that the problem is indeed FPT by describing a polynomial-time
algorithm that transforms any problem instance into an equivalent one with at
most variables. Our results are obtained using our improvement
of the Lieberherr-Specker bound above
Computational Complexity and Phase Transitions
Phase transitions in combinatorial problems have recently been shown to be
useful in locating "hard" instances of combinatorial problems. The connection
between computational complexity and the existence of phase transitions has
been addressed in Statistical Mechanics and Artificial Intelligence, but not
studied rigorously.
We take a step in this direction by investigating the existence of sharp
thresholds for the class of generalized satisfiability problems defined by
Schaefer. In the case when all constraints are clauses we give a complete
characterization of such problems that have a sharp threshold.
While NP-completeness does not imply (even in this restricted case) the
existence of a sharp threshold, it "almost implies" this, since clausal
generalized satisfiability problems that lack a sharp threshold are either
1. polynomial time solvable, or
2. predicted, with success probability lower bounded by some positive
constant by across all the probability range, by a single, trivial procedure.Comment: A (slightly) revised version of the paper submitted to the 15th IEEE
Conference on Computational Complexit
Constraint satisfaction problems in clausal form
This is the report-version of a mini-series of two articles on the
foundations of satisfiability of conjunctive normal forms with non-boolean
variables, to appear in Fundamenta Informaticae, 2011. These two parts are here
bundled in one report, each part yielding a chapter.
Generalised conjunctive normal forms are considered, allowing literals of the
form "variable not-equal value". The first part sets the foundations for the
theory of autarkies, with emphasise on matching autarkies. Main results concern
various polynomial time results in dependency on the deficiency. The second
part considers translations to boolean clause-sets and irredundancy as well as
minimal unsatisfiability. Main results concern classification of minimally
unsatisfiable clause-sets and the relations to the hermitian rank of graphs.
Both parts contain also discussions of many open problems.Comment: 91 pages, to appear in Fundamenta Informaticae, 2011, as Constraint
satisfaction problems in clausal form I: Autarkies and deficiency, Constraint
satisfaction problems in clausal form II: Minimal unsatisfiability and
conflict structur
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