Backdoors for SAT
From International Center for Computational Logic
Backdoors for SAT
Master's thesis by Marco Gario
- Supervisor Steffen Hölldobler
- Wissensverarbeitung
- 1 Oktober 2011 – 1 Oktober 2011
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The concept of backdoor was introduced to try to explain the good performances achieved
on real world SAT instances by solvers. A backdoor is a set of variables that, once decided,
makes the rest of the problem simple (i.e. polynomial-time).
In this thesis we provide a comprehensive overview on the state of the art of backdoors
for SAT. Moreover, we study the relation between backdoors and parameterized
complexity. In order to do so, we consider the problem of finding a smallest strong Hornbackdoor
and we study it by means of the parameterized version of Vertex Cover. We
conclude by presenting some interesting results obtained when analysing strong Hornbackdoors
in instances from different domains.
