1,006 research outputs found
The power of primitive positive definitions with polynomially many variables
Two well-studied closure operators for relations are based on existentially quantified conjunctive formulas, primitive positive (p.p.) definitions, and primitive positive formulas without existential quantification, quantifier-free primitive positive definitions (q.f.p.p.) definitions. Sets of relations closed under p.p. definitions are known as co-clones and sets of relations closed under q.f.p.p. definitions as weak partial co-clones. The latter do however have limited expressivity, and the corresponding lattice of strong partial clones is of uncountably infinite cardinality even for the Boolean domain. Hence, it is reasonable to consider the expressiveness of p.p. definitions where only a small number of existentially quantified variables are allowed. In this article, we consider p.p. definitions allowing only polynomially many existentially quantified variables, and say that a co-clone closed under such definitions is polynomially closed, and otherwise superpolynomially closed. We investigate properties of polynomially closed co-clones and prove that if the corresponding clone contains a k-ary near-unanimity operation for k amp;gt;= 3, then the co-clone is polynomially closed, and if the clone does not contain a k-edge operation for any k amp;gt;= 2, then the co-clone is superpolynomially closed. For the Boolean domain we strengthen these results and prove a complete dichotomy theorem separating polynomially closed co-clones from superpolynomially closed co-clones. Using these results, we then proceed to investigate properties of strong partial clones corresponding to superpolynomially closed co-clones. We prove that if Gamma is a finite set of relations over an arbitrary finite domain such that the clone corresponding to Gamma is essentially unary, then the strong partial clone corresponding to Gamma is of infinite order and cannot be generated by a finite set of partial functions
Schaefer's theorem for graphs
Schaefer's theorem is a complexity classification result for so-called
Boolean constraint satisfaction problems: it states that every Boolean
constraint satisfaction problem is either contained in one out of six classes
and can be solved in polynomial time, or is NP-complete.
We present an analog of this dichotomy result for the propositional logic of
graphs instead of Boolean logic. In this generalization of Schaefer's result,
the input consists of a set W of variables and a conjunction \Phi\ of
statements ("constraints") about these variables in the language of graphs,
where each statement is taken from a fixed finite set \Psi\ of allowed
quantifier-free first-order formulas; the question is whether \Phi\ is
satisfiable in a graph.
We prove that either \Psi\ is contained in one out of 17 classes of graph
formulas and the corresponding problem can be solved in polynomial time, or the
problem is NP-complete. This is achieved by a universal-algebraic approach,
which in turn allows us to use structural Ramsey theory. To apply the
universal-algebraic approach, we formulate the computational problems under
consideration as constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) whose templates are
first-order definable in the countably infinite random graph. Our method to
classify the computational complexity of those CSPs is based on a
Ramsey-theoretic analysis of functions acting on the random graph, and we
develop general tools suitable for such an analysis which are of independent
mathematical interest.Comment: 54 page
Weak Bases of Boolean Co-Clones
Universal algebra and clone theory have proven to be a useful tool in the
study of constraint satisfaction problems since the complexity, up to logspace
reductions, is determined by the set of polymorphisms of the constraint
language. For classifications where primitive positive definitions are
unsuitable, such as size-preserving reductions, weaker closure operations may
be necessary. In this article we consider strong partial clones which can be
seen as a more fine-grained framework than Post's lattice where each clone
splits into an interval of strong partial clones. We investigate these
intervals and give simple relational descriptions, weak bases, of the largest
elements. The weak bases have a highly regular form and are in many cases
easily relatable to the smallest members in the intervals, which suggests that
the lattice of strong partial clones is considerably simpler than the full
lattice of partial clones
Relating the Time Complexity of Optimization Problems in Light of the Exponential-Time Hypothesis
Obtaining lower bounds for NP-hard problems has for a long time been an
active area of research. Recent algebraic techniques introduced by Jonsson et
al. (SODA 2013) show that the time complexity of the parameterized SAT()
problem correlates to the lattice of strong partial clones. With this ordering
they isolated a relation such that SAT() can be solved at least as fast
as any other NP-hard SAT() problem. In this paper we extend this method
and show that such languages also exist for the max ones problem
(MaxOnes()) and the Boolean valued constraint satisfaction problem over
finite-valued constraint languages (VCSP()). With the help of these
languages we relate MaxOnes and VCSP to the exponential time hypothesis in
several different ways.Comment: This is an extended version of Relating the Time Complexity of
Optimization Problems in Light of the Exponential-Time Hypothesis, appearing
in Proceedings of the 39th International Symposium on Mathematical
Foundations of Computer Science MFCS 2014 Budapest, August 25-29, 201
Generalized Satisfiability Problems via Operator Assignments
Schaefer introduced a framework for generalized satisfiability problems on
the Boolean domain and characterized the computational complexity of such
problems. We investigate an algebraization of Schaefer's framework in which the
Fourier transform is used to represent constraints by multilinear polynomials
in a unique way. The polynomial representation of constraints gives rise to a
relaxation of the notion of satisfiability in which the values to variables are
linear operators on some Hilbert space. For the case of constraints given by a
system of linear equations over the two-element field, this relaxation has
received considerable attention in the foundations of quantum mechanics, where
such constructions as the Mermin-Peres magic square show that there are systems
that have no solutions in the Boolean domain, but have solutions via operator
assignments on some finite-dimensional Hilbert space. We obtain a complete
characterization of the classes of Boolean relations for which there is a gap
between satisfiability in the Boolean domain and the relaxation of
satisfiability via operator assignments. To establish our main result, we adapt
the notion of primitive-positive definability (pp-definability) to our setting,
a notion that has been used extensively in the study of constraint satisfaction
problems. Here, we show that pp-definability gives rise to gadget reductions
that preserve satisfiability gaps. We also present several additional
applications of this method. In particular and perhaps surprisingly, we show
that the relaxed notion of pp-definability in which the quantified variables
are allowed to range over operator assignments gives no additional expressive
power in defining Boolean relations
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