Symmetry Breaking for Answer Set Programming

In the context of answer set programming, this work investigates symmetry detection and symmetry breaking to eliminate symmetric parts of the search space and, thereby, simplify the solution process. We contribute a reduction of symmetry detection to a graph automorphism problem which allows to extract symmetries of a logic program from the symmetries of the constructed coloured graph. We also propose an encoding of symmetry-breaking constraints in terms of permutation cycles and use only generators in this process which implicitly represent symmetries and always with exponential compression. These ideas are formulated as preprocessing and implemented in a completely automated flow that first detects symmetries from a given answer set program, adds symmetry-breaking constraints, and can be applied to any existing answer set solver. We demonstrate computational impact on benchmarks versus direct application of the solver. Furthermore, we explore symmetry breaking for answer set programming in two domains: first, constraint answer set programming as a novel approach to represent and solve constraint satisfaction problems, and second, distributed nonmonotonic multi-context systems. In particular, we formulate a translation-based approach to constraint answer set solving which allows for the application of our symmetry detection and symmetry breaking methods. To compare their performance with a-priori symmetry breaking techniques, we also contribute a decomposition of the global value precedence constraint that enforces domain consistency on the original constraint via the unit-propagation of an answer set solver. We evaluate both options in an empirical analysis. In the context of distributed nonmonotonic multi-context system, we develop an algorithm for distributed symmetry detection and also carry over symmetry-breaking constraints for distributed answer set programming.Comment: Diploma thesis. Vienna University of Technology, August 201

Azurite: An algebraic geometry based package for finding bases of loop integrals

For any given Feynman graph, the set of integrals with all possible powers of the propagators spans a vector space of finite dimension. We introduce the package {\sc Azurite} ({\bf A ZUR}ich-bred method for finding master {\bf I}n{\bf TE}grals), which efficiently finds a basis of this vector space. It constructs the needed integration-by-parts (IBP) identities on a set of generalized-unitarity cuts. It is based on syzygy computations and analyses of the symmetries of the involved Feynman diagrams and is powered by the computer algebra systems {\sc Singular} and {\sc Mathematica}. It can moreover analytically calculate the part of the IBP identities that is supported on the cuts.Comment: Version 1.1.0 of the package Azurite, with parallel computations. It can be downloaded from https://bitbucket.org/yzhphy/azurite/raw/master/release/Azurite_1.1.0.tar.g

New Combinatorial Construction Techniques for Low-Density Parity-Check Codes and Systematic Repeat-Accumulate Codes

This paper presents several new construction techniques for low-density parity-check (LDPC) and systematic repeat-accumulate (RA) codes. Based on specific classes of combinatorial designs, the improved code design focuses on high-rate structured codes with constant column weights 3 and higher. The proposed codes are efficiently encodable and exhibit good structural properties. Experimental results on decoding performance with the sum-product algorithm show that the novel codes offer substantial practical application potential, for instance, in high-speed applications in magnetic recording and optical communications channels.Comment: 10 pages; to appear in "IEEE Transactions on Communications