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DescriptiveComplexity.Problems.Taut

TAUT: propositional tautology #

The problem TAUT – is a formula in disjunctive normal form a tautology? – the archetypical coNP-complete problem. Its instances are the structures of the SAT vocabulary FirstOrder.Language.sat, read disjunctively: a CNF formula and a DNF formula are the same data, a set of clauses (here: terms) with the positive and negative occurrences of the variables in each. The reading is in DescriptiveComplexity.Tautology: every truth assignment satisfies all the literals of some term.

Both halves of the coNP-completeness come from SAT by the same interpretation DescriptiveComplexity.swapSignInterp, which keeps the universe and the terms and exchanges positive with negative occurrences. It witnesses De Morgan's law: a DNF is a tautology exactly when the CNF obtained by negating every literal is unsatisfiable (DescriptiveComplexity.tautology_iff_not_satisfiable). Hence

No new second-order argument is needed: TAUT is coNP-complete (DescriptiveComplexity.TAUT_coNP_complete) purely by the complement machinery of DescriptiveComplexity.Complexity and the duality DescriptiveComplexity.piSODefinable_iff_compl.

The disjunctive reading #

A Language.sat-structure, read as a formula in disjunctive normal form, is a tautology when every assignment of truth values to its elements makes some term true – that is, satisfies every literal of that term. (Elements that are not variables of the formula may be assigned arbitrarily; they are harmless since no term mentions them.)

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    De Morgan: tautology is unsatisfiability of the sign swap #

    De Morgan's law, structurally: a DNF formula is a tautology iff the CNF formula obtained by negating every literal is unsatisfiable. The equivalence e presents B as the sign swap of A: same terms, positive and negative occurrences exchanged.

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    Isomorphism-invariance and the bundled problem #

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    TAUT, as a problem on Language.sat-structures read disjunctively: is every truth assignment a model of some term?

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      The sign-swapping interpretation #

      The sign-swapping interpretation: same universe, same terms, positive and negative occurrences exchanged. One-dimensional, single-tagged and quantifier-free.

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        Correctness of the swap, in both directions #

        A DNF formula is a tautology iff its sign swap, read as a CNF formula, is unsatisfiable.

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        Dually: the sign swap of a CNF formula, read as a DNF formula, is a tautology iff the CNF formula is unsatisfiable.

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        The reductions #

        TAUT FO-reduces to the complement of SAT, by swapping the sign of every literal.

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          The complement of SAT FO-reduces to TAUT, by the same swap.

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            The complement of TAUT FO-reduces to SAT: a DNF formula fails to be a tautology exactly when its sign swap is satisfiable.

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              coNP-completeness #

              TAUT is in coNP: its complement FO-reduces to SAT, hence is in NP.

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              coNP-hardness of TAUT, by complementing the Cook–Levin discharge: a Π₁-definable problem has a Σ₁-definable complement, which reduces to SAT; complementing that reduction lands in SATᶜ, which the sign swap turns into TAUT.

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              TAUT is coNP-complete. Membership is DescriptiveComplexity.taut_mem_coNP and hardness DescriptiveComplexity.taut_hard_of_piSODefinable; both are the Cook–Levin theorem read through the complement, with no second-order argument of their own.

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