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

Generalizations of Swierczkowski's lemma and the arity gap of finite functions

Swierczkowski's Lemma - as it is usually formulated - asserts that if f is an at least quaternary operation on a finite set A and every operation obtained from f by identifying a pair of variables is a projection, then f is a semiprojection. We generalize this lemma in various ways. First, it is extended to B-valued functions on A instead of operations on A and to essentially at most unary functions instead of projections. Then we characterize the arity gap of functions of small arities in terms of quasi-arity, which in turn provides a further generalization of Swierczkowski's Lemma. Moreover, we explicitly classify all pseudo-Boolean functions according to their arity gap. Finally, we present a general characterization of the arity gaps of B-valued functions on arbitrary finite sets A.Comment: 11 pages, proofs simplified, contents reorganize

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

A Preliminary Investigation of Satisfiability Problems Not Harder than 1-in-3-SAT

The parameterized satisfiability problem over a set of Boolean relations Gamma (SAT(Gamma)) is the problem of determining whether a conjunctive formula over Gamma has at least one model. Due to Schaefer\u27s dichotomy theorem the computational complexity of SAT(Gamma), modulo polynomial-time reductions, has been completely determined: SAT(Gamma) is always either tractable or NP-complete. More recently, the problem of studying the relationship between the complexity of the NP-complete cases of SAT(Gamma) with restricted notions of reductions has attracted attention. For example, Impagliazzo et al. studied the complexity of k-SAT and proved that the worst-case time complexity increases infinitely often for larger values of k, unless 3-SAT is solvable in subexponential time. In a similar line of research Jonsson et al. studied the complexity of SAT(Gamma) with algebraic tools borrowed from clone theory and proved that there exists an NP-complete problem SAT(R^{neq,neq,neq,01}_{1/3}) such that there cannot exist any NP-complete SAT(Gamma) problem with strictly lower worst-case time complexity: the easiest NP-complete SAT(Gamma) problem. In this paper we are interested in classifying the NP-complete SAT(Gamma) problems whose worst-case time complexity is lower than 1-in-3-SAT but higher than the easiest problem SAT(R^{neq,neq,neq,01}_{1/3}). Recently it was conjectured that there only exists three satisfiability problems of this form. We prove that this conjecture does not hold and that there is an infinite number of such SAT(Gamma) problems. In the process we determine several algebraic properties of 1-in-3-SAT and related problems, which could be of independent interest for constructing exponential-time algorithms

A survey of clones on infinite sets

A clone on a set X is a set of finitary operations on X which contains all projections and which is moreover closed under functional composition. Ordering all clones on X by inclusion, one obtains a complete algebraic lattice, called the clone lattice. We summarize what we know about the clone lattice on an infinite base set X and formulate what we consider the most important open problems.Comment: 37 page

The arity gap of polynomial functions over bounded distributive lattices

Let A and B be arbitrary sets with at least two elements. The arity gap of a function f: A^n \to B is the minimum decrease in its essential arity when essential arguments of f are identified. In this paper we study the arity gap of polynomial functions over bounded distributive lattices and present a complete classification of such functions in terms of their arity gap. To this extent, we present a characterization of the essential arguments of polynomial functions, which we then use to show that almost all lattice polynomial functions have arity gap 1, with the exception of truncated median functions, whose arity gap is 2.Comment: 7 page

The arity gap of order-preserving functions and extensions of pseudo-Boolean functions

The aim of this paper is to classify order-preserving functions according to their arity gap. Noteworthy examples of order-preserving functions are so-called aggregation functions. We first explicitly classify the Lov\'asz extensions of pseudo-Boolean functions according to their arity gap. Then we consider the class of order-preserving functions between partially ordered sets, and establish a similar explicit classification for this function class.Comment: 11 pages, material reorganize