Program Verification in the presence of complex numbers, functions with branch cuts etc

In considering the reliability of numerical programs, it is normal to "limit our study to the semantics dealing with numerical precision" (Martel, 2005). On the other hand, there is a great deal of work on the reliability of programs that essentially ignores the numerics. The thesis of this paper is that there is a class of problems that fall between these two, which could be described as "does the low-level arithmetic implement the high-level mathematics". Many of these problems arise because mathematics, particularly the mathematics of the complex numbers, is more difficult than expected: for example the complex function log is not continuous, writing down a program to compute an inverse function is more complicated than just solving an equation, and many algebraic simplification rules are not universally valid. The good news is that these problems are theoretically capable of being solved, and are practically close to being solved, but not yet solved, in several real-world examples. However, there is still a long way to go before implementations match the theoretical possibilities

Adapting Real Quantifier Elimination Methods for Conflict Set Computation

The satisfiability problem in real closed fields is decidable. In the context of satisfiability modulo theories, the problem restricted to conjunctive sets of literals, that is, sets of polynomial constraints, is of particular importance. One of the central problems is the computation of good explanations of the unsatisfiability of such sets, i.e.\ obtaining a small subset of the input constraints whose conjunction is already unsatisfiable. We adapt two commonly used real quantifier elimination methods, cylindrical algebraic decomposition and virtual substitution, to provide such conflict sets and demonstrate the performance of our method in practice

ACL2 Proofs of Nonlinear Inequalities with Imandra

We present a proof-producing integration of ACL2 and Imandra for proving nonlinear inequalities. This leverages a new Imandra interface exposing its nonlinear decision procedures. The reasoning takes place over the reals, but the proofs produced are valid over the rationals and may be run in both ACL2 and ACL2(r). The ACL2 proofs Imandra constructs are extracted from Positivstellensatz refutations, a real algebraic analogue of the Nullstellensatz, and are found using convex optimization.Comment: In Proceedings ACL2-2023, arXiv:2311.0837

A Lazy SMT-Solver for a Non-Linear Subset of Real Algebra

There are several methods for the synthesis and analysis of hybrid systems that require efficient algorithms and tools for satisfiability checking. For analysis, e.g., bounded model checking describes counterexamples of a fixed length by logical formulas, whose satisfiability corresponds to the existence of such a counterexample. As an example for parameter synthesis, we can state the correctness of a parameterized system by a logical formula; the solution set of the formula gives us possible safe instances of the parameters. For discrete systems, which can be described by propositional logic formulas, SAT-solvers can be used for the satisfiability checks. For hybrid systems, having mixed discrete-continuous behavior, SMT-solvers are needed. SMT-solving extends SAT with theories, and has its main focus on linear arithmetic, which is sufficient to handle, e.g., linear hybrid systems. However, there are only few solvers for more expressive but still decidable logics like the first-order theory of the reals with addition and multiplication -- real algebra. Since the synthesis and analysis of non-linear hybrid systems requires such a powerful logic, we need efficient SMT-solvers for real algebra. Our goal is to develop such an SMT-solver for the real algebra, which is both complete and efficient

Determinantal sets, singularities and application to optimal control in medical imagery

Control theory has recently been involved in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance imagery. The goal is to control the magnetic field optimally in order to improve the contrast between two biological matters on the pictures. Geometric optimal control leads us here to analyze mero-morphic vector fields depending upon physical parameters , and having their singularities defined by a deter-minantal variety. The involved matrix has polynomial entries with respect to both the state variables and the parameters. Taking into account the physical constraints of the problem, one needs to classify, with respect to the parameters, the number of real singularities lying in some prescribed semi-algebraic set. We develop a dedicated algorithm for real root classification of the singularities of the rank defects of a polynomial matrix, cut with a given semi-algebraic set. The algorithm works under some genericity assumptions which are easy to check. These assumptions are not so restrictive and are satisfied in the aforementioned application. As more general strategies for real root classification do, our algorithm needs to compute the critical loci of some maps, intersections with the boundary of the semi-algebraic domain, etc. In order to compute these objects, the determinantal structure is exploited through a stratifi-cation by the rank of the polynomial matrix. This speeds up the computations by a factor 100. Furthermore, our implementation is able to solve the application in medical imagery, which was out of reach of more general algorithms for real root classification. For instance, computational results show that the contrast problem where one of the matters is water is partitioned into three distinct classes

Synthesizing Switching Controllers for Hybrid Systems by Continuous Invariant Generation

We extend a template-based approach for synthesizing switching controllers for semi-algebraic hybrid systems, in which all expressions are polynomials. This is achieved by combining a QE (quantifier elimination)-based method for generating continuous invariants with a qualitative approach for predefining templates. Our synthesis method is relatively complete with regard to a given family of predefined templates. Using qualitative analysis, we discuss heuristics to reduce the numbers of parameters appearing in the templates. To avoid too much human interaction in choosing templates as well as the high computational complexity caused by QE, we further investigate applications of the SOS (sum-of-squares) relaxation approach and the template polyhedra approach in continuous invariant generation, which are both well supported by efficient numerical solvers