Journal of Automated Reasoning

Ordered paramodulation and Knuth-Bendix completion are known to remain complete when using non-monotonic orderings. However, these results do not imply the compatibility of the calculus with essential redundancy elimination techniques such as demodulation, i.e., simplification by rewriting, which constitute the primary mode of computation in most successful automated theorem provers. In this paper we present a complete ordered paramodulation calculus for non-monotonic orderings which is compatible with powerful redundancy notions including demodulation, hence strictly improving the previous results and making the calculus more likely to be used in practice. As a side effect, we obtain a Knuth-Bendix completion procedure compatible with simplification techniques, which can be used for finding, whenever it exists, a convergent term rewrite system for a given set of equations and a (possibly non-totalizable) reduction ordering.

We present a semantic framework for the deductive verification of hybrid systems with Isabelle/HOL. It supports reasoning about the temporal evolutions of hybrid programs in the style of differential dynamic logic modelled by flows or invariant sets for vector fields. We introduce the semantic foundations of this framework and summarise their Isabelle formalisation as well as the resulting verification components. A series of simple examples shows our approach at work.

We introduce a DPLL calculus that is a decision procedure for the Bernays-Schönfinkel class, also known as EPR. Our calculus allows combining techniques for efficient propositional search with data-structures, such as Binary Decision Diagrams, that can efficiently and succinctly encode finite sets of substitutions and operations on these. In the calculus, clauses comprise of a sequence of literals together with a finite set of substitutions; truth assignments are also represented using substitution sets. The calculus works directly at the level of sets, and admits performing simultaneous constraint propagation and decisions, resulting in potentially exponential speedups over existing approaches.

We study the parameterized complexity of detecting small backdoor sets for instances of the propositional satisfiability problem (SAT). The notion of backdoor sets has been recently introduced by Williams, Gomes, and Selman for explaining the ‘heavy-tailed’ behavior of backtracking algorithms. If a small backdoor set is found, then the instance can be solved efficiently by the propagation and simplification mechanisms of a SAT solver. Empirical studies indicate that structured SAT instances coming from practical applications have small backdoor sets. We study the worst-case complexity of detecting backdoor sets with respect to the simplification and propagation mechanisms of the classic Davis–Logemann–Loveland (DLL) procedure. We show that the detection of backdoor sets of size bounded by a fixed integer k is of high parameterized complexity. In particular, we determine that this detection problem (and some of its variants) is complete for the parameterized complexity class W[P]. We achieve this result by means of a generalization of a reduction due to Abrahamson, Downey, and Fellows.

Higman’s lemma is an important result in infinitary combinatorics, which has been formalized in several theorem provers. In this paper we present a formalization and proof of Higman’s Lemma in the ACL2 theorem prover. Our formalization is based on a proof by Murthy and Russell, where the key termination argument is justified by the multiset relation induced by a well-founded relation. To our knowledge, this is the first mechanization of this proof.

We investigate a first-order array theory of bounded elements. This theory has rich expressive power that allows free use of quantifiers. By reducing to weak second-order logic with one successor (WS1S), we show that the proposed array theory is decidable. Then two natural extensions to the new theory are shown to be undecidable. A translation-based decision procedure for this theory is implemented, and is shown applicable to program verification.

Sturm’s theorem is a well-known result in real algebraic geometry that provides a function that computes the number of roots of a univariate polynomial in a semi-open interval, not counting multiplicity. A generalization of Sturm’s theorem is known as Tarski’s theorem, which provides a linear relationship between functions known as Tarski queries and cardinalities of certain sets. The linear system that results from this relationship is in fact invertible and can be used to explicitly count the number of roots of a univariate polynomial on a set defined by a system of polynomial relations. This paper presents a formalization of these results in the PVS theorem prover, including formal proofs of Sturm’s and Tarski’s theorems. These theorems are at the basis of two decision procedures, which are implemented as computable functions in PVS. The first, based on Sturm’s theorem, determines satisfiability of a single polynomial relation over an interval. The second, based on Tarski’s theorem, determines the satisfiability of a system of polynomial relations over the real line. The soundness and completeness properties of these decision procedures are formally verified in PVS. The procedures and their correctness properties enable the implementation of PVS strategies for automatically proving existential and universal statements on polynomial systems. Since the decision procedures are formally verified in PVS, the soundness of the strategies depends solely on the internal logic of PVS rather than on an external oracle.

We propose an effective procedure, the first one to our knowledge, for translating a proof term of the Calculus of Inductive Constructions (CIC), into a tactical expression of the high-level specification language of a CIC-based proof assistant like coq (Coq development team 2008) or matita (Asperti et al., J Autom Reason 39:109–139, 2007). This procedure, which should not be considered definitive at its present stage, is intended for translating the logical representation of a proof coming from any source, i.e. from a digital library or from another proof development system, into an equivalent proof presented in the proof assistant’s editable high-level format. To testify to effectiveness of our procedure, we report on its implementation in matita and on the translation of a significant set of proofs (Guidi, ACM Trans Comput Log 2009) from their logical representation as coq 7.3.1 (Coq development team 2002) CIC proof terms to their high-level representation as tactical expressions of matita’s user interface language.