Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

Beating Brute Force Search for QBF Satisfiability, and Implications for Formula Size Lower Bounds

Seminar
Speaker: Rahul Santhanam (University of Edinburgh School of Informatics 10, Crichton Street Edinburgh - EH8 9AB United Kingdom)
Organiser: Arkadev Chattopadhyay
Date: Thursday, 17 Apr 2014, 16:00 to 17:00
Venue: AG-80

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Abstract:  Abstract: We give the first algorithms for the QBF Satisfiability problem beating brute force search. We show that the QBF satisfiability question for CNF instances with $n$ variables, $q$ quantifier blocks and size $poly(n)$ can be solved in time $2^{n-\Omega(n^{1/(q+1)})}$, and that the QBF satisfiability question for circuit instances with $n$ variables, $q$ quantifier blocks and size $poly(n)$ can be solved in time $2^{n-\Omega(q)}$. We also show that improvements on these algorithms would lead to super-polynomial formula size lower bounds for NEXP (this is joint work with Ryan Williams).