Backdoors to Acyclic SAT

Abstract

Backdoor sets contain certain key variables of a CNF formula F that make it easy to solve the formula. More specifically, a weak backdoor set of F is a set X of variables such that there exits a truth assignment τ to X that reduces F to a satisfiable formula F[τ] that belongs to a polynomial-time decidable base class $\mathcal C$. A strong backdoor set is a set X of variables such that for all assignments τ to X, the reduced formula F[τ] belongs to $\mathcal C$.

We study the problem of finding backdoor sets of size at most k with respect to the base class of CNF formulas with acyclic incidence graphs, taking k as the parameter. We show that

• 1 the detection of weak backdoor sets is W[2]-hard in general but fixed-parameter tractable for r-CNF formulas, for any fixed r ≥ 3, and

• 2 the detection of strong backdoor sets is fixed-parameter approximable.

Result 1 is the the first positive one for a base class that does not have a characterization with obstructions of bounded size. Result 2 is the first positive one for a base class for which strong backdoor sets are more powerful than deletion backdoor sets.

Not only SAT, but also #SAT can be solved in polynomial time for CNF formulas with acyclic incidence graphs. Hence Result 2 establishes a new structural parameter that makes #SAT fixed-parameter tractable and that is incomparable with known parameters such as treewidth and clique-width. We obtain the algorithms by a combination of an algorithmic version of the Erdős-Pósa Theorem, Courcelle’s model checking for monadic second order logic, and new combinatorial results on how disjoint cycles can interact with the backdoor set.

The full version of the paper is available on arXiv [17].