116 research outputs found

    Constraint satisfaction problems in clausal form

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    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

    On SAT representations of XOR constraints

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    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

    Trading inference effort versus size in CNF Knowledge Compilation

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    Knowledge Compilation (KC) studies compilation of boolean functions f into some formalism F, which allows to answer all queries of a certain kind in polynomial time. Due to its relevance for SAT solving, we concentrate on the query type "clausal entailment" (CE), i.e., whether a clause C follows from f or not, and we consider subclasses of CNF, i.e., clause-sets F with special properties. In this report we do not allow auxiliary variables (except of the Outlook), and thus F needs to be equivalent to f. We consider the hierarchies UC_k <= WC_k, which were introduced by the authors in 2012. Each level allows CE queries. The first two levels are well-known classes for KC. Namely UC_0 = WC_0 is the same as PI as studied in KC, that is, f is represented by the set of all prime implicates, while UC_1 = WC_1 is the same as UC, the class of unit-refutation complete clause-sets introduced by del Val 1994. We show that for each k there are (sequences of) boolean functions with polysize representations in UC_{k+1}, but with an exponential lower bound on representations in WC_k. Such a separation was previously only know for k=0. We also consider PC < UC, the class of propagation-complete clause-sets. We show that there are (sequences of) boolean functions with polysize representations in UC, while there is an exponential lower bound for representations in PC. These separations are steps towards a general conjecture determining the representation power of the hierarchies PC_k < UC_k <= WC_k. The strong form of this conjecture also allows auxiliary variables, as discussed in depth in the Outlook.Comment: 43 pages, second version with literature updates. Proceeds with the separation results from the discontinued arXiv:1302.442

    The combinatorics of minimal unsatisfiability: connecting to graph theory

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    Minimally Unsatisfiable CNFs (MUs) are unsatisfiable CNFs where removing any clause destroys unsatisfiability. MUs are the building blocks of unsatisfia-bility, and our understanding of them can be very helpful in answering various algorithmic and structural questions relating to unsatisfiability. In this thesis we study MUs from a combinatorial point of view, with the aim of extending the understanding of the structure of MUs. We show that some important classes of MUs are very closely related to known classes of digraphs, and using arguments from logic and graph theory we characterise these MUs.Two main concepts in this thesis are isomorphism of CNFs and the implica-tion digraph of 2-CNFs (at most two literals per disjunction). Isomorphism of CNFs involves renaming the variables, and flipping the literals. The implication digraph of a 2-CNF F has both arcs (¬a → b) and (¬b → a) for every binary clause (a ∨ b) in F .In the first part we introduce a novel connection between MUs and Minimal Strong Digraphs (MSDs), strongly connected digraphs, where removing any arc destroys the strong connectedness. We introduce the new class DFM of special MUs, which are in close correspondence to MSDs. The known relation between 2-CNFs and implication digraphs is used, but in a simpler and more direct way, namely that we have a canonical choice of one of the two arcs. As an application of this new framework we provide short and intuitive new proofs for two im-portant but isolated characterisations for nonsingular MUs (every literal occurs at least twice), both with ingenious but complicated proofs: Characterising 2-MUs (minimally unsatisfiable 2-CNFs), and characterising MUs with deficiency 2 (two more clauses than variables).In the second part, we provide a fundamental addition to the study of 2-CNFs which have efficient algorithms for many interesting problems, namely that we provide a full classification of 2-MUs and a polytime isomorphism de-cision of this class. We show that implication digraphs of 2-MUs are “Weak Double Cycles” (WDCs), big cycles of small cycles (with possible overlaps). Combining logical and graph-theoretical methods, we prove that WDCs have at most one skew-symmetry (a self-inverse fixed-point free anti-symmetry, re-versing the direction of arcs). It follows that the isomorphisms between 2-MUs are exactly the isomorphisms between their implication digraphs (since digraphs with given skew-symmetry are the same as 2-CNFs). This reduces the classifi-cation of 2-MUs to the classification of a nice class of digraphs.Finally in the outlook we discuss further applications, including an alter-native framework for enumerating some special Minimally Unsatisfiable Sub-clause-sets (MUSs)

    Hardness measures and resolution lower bounds

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    Various "hardness" measures have been studied for resolution, providing theoretical insight into the proof complexity of resolution and its fragments, as well as explanations for the hardness of instances in SAT solving. In this report we aim at a unified view of a number of hardness measures, including different measures of width, space and size of resolution proofs. We also extend these measures to all clause-sets (possibly satisfiable).Comment: 43 pages, preliminary version (yet the application part is only sketched, with proofs missing
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