The Complexity of Quantified Constraint Satisfaction: Collapsibility, Sink Algebras, and the Three-Element Case (original) (raw)
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The Complexity of Problems for Quantified Constraints
Theory of Computing Systems / Mathematical Systems Theory, 2007
In this paper we will look at restricted versions of the evaluation problem, the model checking problem, the equivalence problem, and the counting problem for quantified propositional formulas, both with and without bound on the number of quantifier alternations. The restrictions are such that we consider formulas in conjunctive normal-form with restricted types of clauses (e.g., positive, Horn, linear, etc.). For each of these algorithmic goals we will obtain full complexity classifications, exhibiting on the one hand severe syntactic restrictions of the original problems that are still computationally hard, and on the other hand non-trivial subcases that admit efficient solution algorithms. Generalizing these results to non Boolean domains, we obtain a number of hardnes results for quantified constraints over arbitrary finite universes. Supported in part by the following grants: DFG Vo 630/5-1, 630/5-2,ÉGIDE 05835SH, DAAD D/0205776. Some of the results reported in Sect. 5.2 of this paper already appeared in ECCC Report 05-024.
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2005
We give a clear picture of the tractability/intractability frontier for quantified constraint satisfaction problems (QCSPs) under structural restrictions. On the negative side, we prove that checking QCSP satisfiability remains PSPACE-hard for all known structural properties more general than bounded treewidth and for the incomparable hypergraph acyclicity. Moreover, if the domain is not fixed, the problem is PSPACE-hard even for tree-shaped constraint scopes. On the positive side, we identify relevant tractable classes, including QCSPs with prefix ∃∀ having bounded hypertree width, and QCSPs with a bounded number of guards. The latter are solvable in polynomial time without any bound on domains or quantifier alternations.
Quantified Constraints and Containment Problems
2008 23rd Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, 2008
We study two containment problems related to the quantified constraint satisfaction problem (QCSP). Firstly, we give a combinatorial condition on finite structures A and B that is necessary and sufficient to render QCSP(A) ⊆ QCSP(B). The required condition is the existence of a positive integer r such that there is a surjective homomorphism from the power structure A r to B. We note that this condition is already necessary to guarantee containment of the Π 2 restriction of QCSP, that is Π 2-CSP(A) ⊆ Π 2-CSP(B). Since we are able to give an effective bound on such an r, we provide a decision procedure for the model containment problem with non-deterministic double-exponential time complexity. Secondly, we prove that the entailment problem for quantified conjunctive-positive first-order logic is decidable. That is, given two sentences ϕ and ψ of first-order logic with no instances of negation or disjunction, we give an algorithm that determines whether ϕ → ψ is true in all structures (models). Our result is in some sense tight, since we show that the entailment problem for positive firstorder logic (i.e. quantified conjunctive-positive logic plus disjunction) is undecidable.
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We present algebraic conditions on constraint languages Γ that ensure the hardness of the constraint satisfaction problem CSP(Γ) for complexity classes L, NL, P, NP and ModpL. These criteria also give non-expressibility results for various restrictions of Datalog. Furthermore, we show that if CSP(Γ) is not first-order definable then it is L-hard. Our proofs rely on tame congruence theory and on a fine-grain analysis of the complexity of reductions used in the algebraic study of CSP. The results pave the way for a refinement of the dichotomy conjecture stating that each CSP(Γ) lies in P or is NP-complete and they match the recent classification of [2] for Boolean CSP. We also infer a partial classification theorem for the complexity of CSP(Γ) when the associated algebra of Γ is the full idempotent reduct of a preprimal algebra.
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Automata, Languages and Programming, 2008
We show that every computational decision problem is polynomialtime equivalent to a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) with an infinite template. We also construct for every decision problem L an ω-categorical template Γ such that L reduces to CSP(Γ ) and CSP(Γ ) is in coNP L (i.e., the class coNP with an oracle for L). CSPs with ω-categorical templates are of special interest, because the universal-algebraic approach can be applied to study their computational complexity. Furthermore, we prove that there are ω-categorical templates with coNP-complete CSPs and ω-categorical templates with coNP-intermediate CSPs, i.e., problems in coNP that are neither coNP-complete nor in P (unless P=coNP). To construct the coNP-intermediate CSP with ω-categorical template we modify the proof of Ladner's theorem. A similar modification allows us to also prove a non-dichotomy result for a class of left-hand side restricted CSPs, which was left open in . We finally show that if the so-called local-global conjecture for infinite constraint languages (over a finite domain) is false, then there is no dichotomy for the constraint satisfaction problem for infinite constraint languages.
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The universal-algebraic approach has proved a powerful tool in the study of the computational complexity of constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs). This approach has previously been applied to the study of CSPs with finite or (infinite) ω-categorical templates. Our first result is an exact characterization of those CSPs that can be formulated with (a finite or) an ω-categorical template.
Constraint Satisfaction with Counting Quantifiers
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012
We study constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) in the presence of counting quantifiers ∃ ≥j , asserting the existence of j distinct witnesses for the variable in question. As a continuation of our previous (CSR 2012) paper [11], we focus on the complexity of undirected graph templates. As our main contribution, we settle the two principal open questions proposed in [11]. Firstly, we complete the classification of clique templates by proving a full trichotomy for all possible combinations of counting quantifiers and clique sizes, placing each case either in P, NP-complete or Pspace-complete. This involves resolution of the cases in which we have the single quantifier ∃ ≥j on the clique K 2j. Secondly, we confirm a conjecture from [11], which proposes a full dichotomy for ∃ and ∃ ≥2 on all finite undirected graphs. The main thrust of this second result is the solution of the complexity for the infinite path which we prove is a polynomial-time solvable problem. By adapting the algorithm for the infinite path we are then able to solve the problem for finite paths, and then trees and forests. Thus as a corollary to this work, combining with the other cases from [11], we obtain a full dichotomy for ∃ and ∃ ≥2 quantifiers on finite graphs, each such problem being either in P or NP-hard. Finally, we persevere with the work of [11] in exploring cases in which there is dichotomy between P and Pspace-complete, in contrast with situations in which the intermediate NP-completeness may appear.
2011
Many fundamental problems in artificial intelligence, knowledge representation, and verification involve reasoning about sets and relations between sets and can be modeled as set constraint satisfaction problems (set CSPs). Such problems are frequently intractable, but there are several important set CSPs that are known to be polynomial-time tractable. We introduce a large class of set CSPs that can be solved in quadratic time. Our class, which we call E I, contains all previously known tractable set CSPs, but also some new ones that are of crucial importance for example in description logics. The class of E I set constraints has an elegant universal-algebraic characterization, which we use to show that every set constraint language that properly contains all E I set constraints already has a finite sublanguage with an NP-hard constraint satisfaction problem.
Quantified Constraints: The Complexity of Decision and Counting for Bounded Alternation
Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity, 2005
We consider constraint satisfaction problems parameterized by the set of allowed constraint predicates. We examine the complexity of quantified constraint satisfaction problems with a bounded number of quantifier alternations and the complexity of the associated counting problems. We obtain classification results that completely solve the Boolean case, and we show that hardness results carry over to the case of arbitrary finite domains. 3-DNF for i even [DHK00]. Therefore, it is natural to define the counting problem associated with QCSP i (S) as follows.
2005
Several propositional fragments have been considered so far as target languages for knowledge compilation and used for improving computational tasks from major AI areas (like inference, diagnosis and planning); among them are the ordered binary decision diagrams, prime implicates, prime implicants, "formulae" in decomposable negation normal form. On the other hand, the validity problem val(QPROP P S ) for Quantified Boolean Formulae (QBF) has been acknowledged for the past few years as an important issue for AI, and many solvers have been designed. In this paper, the complexity of restrictions of the validity problem for QBF obtained by imposing the matrix of the input QBF to belong to propositional fragments used as target languages for compilation, is identified. It turns out that this problem remains hard (PSPACE-complete) even under severe restrictions on the matrix of the input. Nevertheless some tractable restrictions are pointed out.