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In logic and computer science, the Boolean satisfiability problem (sometimes called propositional satisfiability problem and abbreviated SATISFIABILITY, SAT or B-SAT) is the problem of determining if there exists an interpretation that satisfies a given Boolean formula. In other words, it asks whether the variables of a given Boolean formula can be consistently replaced by the values TRUE or FALSE in such a way that the formula evaluates to TRUE. If this is the case, the formula is called satisfiable. On the other hand, if no such assignment exists, the function expressed by the formula is FALSE for all possible variable assignments and the formula is unsatisfiable. For example, the formula "a AND NOT b" is satisfiable because one can find the values a = TRUE and b = FALSE, which make (a AND NOT b) = TRUE. In contrast, "a AND NOT a" is unsatisfiable.
The P versus NP problem is a major unsolved problem in theoretical computer science. In informal terms, it asks whether every problem whose solution can be quickly verified can also be quickly solved.
In computational complexity theory, co-NP is a complexity class. A decision problem X is a member of co-NP if and only if its complement X is in the complexity class NP. The class can be defined as follows: a decision problem is in co-NP precisely if only no-instances have a polynomial-length "certificate" and there is a polynomial-time algorithm that can be used to verify any purported certificate.
In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved by a computer. A computation problem is solvable by mechanical application of mathematical steps, such as an algorithm.
In computational complexity theory, the complexity class #P (pronounced "sharp P" or, sometimes "number P" or "hash P") is the set of the counting problems associated with the decision problems in the set NP. More formally, #P is the class of function problems of the form "compute f(x)", where f is the number of accepting paths of a nondeterministic Turing machine running in polynomial time. Unlike most well-known complexity classes, it is not a class of decision problems but a class of function problems. The most difficult, representative problems of this class are #P-complete.
In computational complexity theory, NP-hardness is the defining property of a class of problems that are informally "at least as hard as the hardest problems in NP". A simple example of an NP-hard problem is the subset sum problem.
In computational complexity theory, a decision problem is P-complete if it is in P and every problem in P can be reduced to it by an appropriate reduction.
In computer science, 2-satisfiability, 2-SAT or just 2SAT is a computational problem of assigning values to variables, each of which has two possible values, in order to satisfy a system of constraints on pairs of variables. It is a special case of the general Boolean satisfiability problem, which can involve constraints on more than two variables, and of constraint satisfaction problems, which can allow more than two choices for the value of each variable. But in contrast to those more general problems, which are NP-complete, 2-satisfiability can be solved in polynomial time.
In graph theory, a vertex cover of a graph is a set of vertices that includes at least one endpoint of every edge of the graph.
In the mathematical discipline of graph theory, a matching or independent edge set in an undirected graph is a set of edges without common vertices. In other words, a subset of the edges is a matching if each vertex appears in at most one edge of that matching. Finding a matching in a bipartite graph can be treated as a network flow problem.
In computer science, parameterized complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty with respect to multiple parameters of the input or output. The complexity of a problem is then measured as a function of those parameters. This allows the classification of NP-hard problems on a finer scale than in the classical setting, where the complexity of a problem is only measured as a function of the number of bits in the input. The first systematic work on parameterized complexity was done by Downey & Fellows (1999).
In computational complexity theory, the Cook–Levin theorem, also known as Cook's theorem, states that the Boolean satisfiability problem is NP-complete. That is, it is in NP, and any problem in NP can be reduced in polynomial time by a deterministic Turing machine to the Boolean satisfiability problem.
In computational complexity theory, the class APX is the set of NP optimization problems that allow polynomial-time approximation algorithms with approximation ratio bounded by a constant. In simple terms, problems in this class have efficient algorithms that can find an answer within some fixed multiplicative factor of the optimal answer.
The Valiant–Vazirani theorem is a theorem in computational complexity theory stating that if there is a polynomial time algorithm for Unambiguous-SAT, then NP = RP. It was proven by Leslie Valiant and Vijay Vazirani in their paper titled NP is as easy as detecting unique solutions published in 1986. The proof is based on the Mulmuley–Vazirani–Vazirani isolation lemma, which was subsequently used for a number of important applications in theoretical computer science.
Vijay Virkumar Vazirani is an Indian American distinguished professor of computer science in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Irvine.
In computational complexity theory, the maximum satisfiability problem (MAX-SAT) is the problem of determining the maximum number of clauses, of a given Boolean formula in conjunctive normal form, that can be made true by an assignment of truth values to the variables of the formula. It is a generalization of the Boolean satisfiability problem, which asks whether there exists a truth assignment that makes all clauses true.
In computational complexity theory, a gadget is a subset of a problem instance that simulates the behavior of one of the fundamental units of a different computational problem. Gadgets are typically used to construct reductions from one computational problem to another, as part of proofs of NP-completeness or other types of computational hardness. The component design technique is a method for constructing reductions by using gadgets.
In computational complexity theory, a problem is NP-complete when:
- it is a problem for which the correctness of each solution can be verified quickly and a brute-force search algorithm can find a solution by trying all possible solutions.
- the problem can be used to simulate every other problem for which we can verify quickly that a solution is correct. In this sense, NP-complete problems are the hardest of the problems to which solutions can be verified quickly. If we could find solutions of some NP-complete problem quickly, we could quickly find the solutions of every other problem to which a given solution can be easily verified.
In computer science, the Sharp Satisfiability Problem is the problem of counting the number of interpretations that satisfy a given Boolean formula, introduced by Valiant in 1979. In other words, it asks in how many ways the variables of a given Boolean formula can be consistently replaced by the values TRUE or FALSE in such a way that the formula evaluates to TRUE. For example, the formula is satisfiable by three distinct boolean value assignments of the variables, namely, for any of the assignments, ,
, we have = TRUE.
In theoretical computer science, the term isolation lemma refers to randomized algorithms that reduce the number of solutions to a problem to one, should a solution exist. This is achieved by constructing random constraints such that, with non-negligible probability, exactly one solution satisfies these additional constraints if the solution space is not empty. Isolation lemmas have important applications in computer science, such as the Valiant–Vazirani theorem and Toda's theorem in computational complexity theory.
References
- ↑ Valiant, Leslie G. (August 1979). "The Complexity of Enumeration and Reliability Problems" (PDF). SIAM Journal on Computing. 8 (3): 410–421. doi:10.1137/0208032.
- ↑ Brightwell, Graham R.; Winkler, Peter (1991). "Counting linear extensions". Order . 8 (3): 225–242. doi:10.1007/BF00383444. S2CID 119697949..
- ↑ Leslie G. Valiant (1979). "The Complexity of Computing the Permanent". Theoretical Computer Science. Elsevier. 8 (2): 189–201. doi: 10.1016/0304-3975(79)90044-6 .
- ↑ Mark R. Jerrum; Leslie G. Valiant; Vijay V. Vazirani (1986). "Random Generation of Combinatorial Structures from a Uniform Distribution". Theoretical Computer Science. Elsevier. 43: 169–188. doi: 10.1016/0304-3975(86)90174-x .