# Selected Papers of the International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning (IJCAR 2016)

Editors: Nicola Olivetti and Ashish Tiwari

This special issue of the Logical Methods in Computer Science (LMCS) journal is dedicated to selected papers presented at the 8th International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning (IJCAR) 2016, held between 27 June - 2 July, 2016, in Coimbra, Portugal. IJCAR is the premier international joint conference covering all topics in automated reasoning. Every other year, IJCAR is organized as a merger of leading events in automated reasoning: CADE (Conference of Automated Deduction), FroCoS (Workshop on Frontiers of Combining Systems), and TABLEAUX (Conference on Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods).

The six papers included in this special issue underwent a two-round reviewing process. In the first round, the papers were reviewed by at least three reviewer as part of the IJCAR 2016 reviewing process. The top rated papers in the first round, which were also selected for presentation at IJCAR 2016, were then invited for the special issue. The authors submitted revised and extended versions of their conference proceedings papers. The journal submissions were required to contain significant new material. In the second round, the submitted extended papers went through the reviewing process of LMCS. Each paper was reviewed by at least two reviewers.

The papers in this special issue span a wide range of topics in automated reasoning. The six papers together cover topics in Satisfiability (SAT) checking, Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT), Theory extensions, Resolution, Proof-Theory of Modal Logic, and Intuitionistic Substructural Logic.

We thank the authors for their valuable contributions. We are especially grateful to the reviewers for their thorough and extensive feedback. We also thank Stefan Milius for facilitating the process of the reviewing and publication of this special issue in LMCS.

Nicola Olivetti, Ashish Tiwari
IJCAR 2016 Special Issue Guest Editors

### 1. On Interpolation and Symbol Elimination in Theory Extensions

In this paper we study possibilities of interpolation and symbol elimination in extensions of a theory $\mathcal{T}_0$ with additional function symbols whose properties are axiomatised using a set of clauses. We analyze situations in which we can perform such tasks in a hierarchical way, relying on existing mechanisms for symbol elimination in $\mathcal{T}_0$. This is for instance possible if the base theory allows quantifier elimination. We analyze possibilities of extending such methods to situations in which the base theory does not allow quantifier elimination but has a model completion which does. We illustrate the method on various examples.

### 2. Local Redundancy in SAT: Generalizations of Blocked Clauses

Clause-elimination procedures that simplify formulas in conjunctive normal form play an important role in modern SAT solving. Before or during the actual solving process, such procedures identify and remove clauses that are irrelevant to the solving result. These simplifications usually rely on so-called redundancy properties that characterize cases in which the removal of a clause does not affect the satisfiability status of a formula. One particularly successful redundancy property is that of blocked clauses, because it generalizes several other redundancy properties. To find out whether a clause is blocked---and therefore redundant---one only needs to consider its resolution environment, i.e., the clauses with which it can be resolved. For this reason, we say that the redundancy property of blocked clauses is local. In this paper, we show that there exist local redundancy properties that are even more general than blocked clauses. We present a semantic notion of blocking and prove that it constitutes the most general local redundancy property. We furthermore introduce the syntax-based notions of set-blocking and super-blocking, and show that the latter coincides with our semantic blocking notion. In addition, we show how semantic blocking can be alternatively characterized via Davis and Putnam's rule for eliminating atomic formulas. Finally, we perform a detailed complexity analysis and relate our novel redundancy properties to prominent redundancy properties from the […]

### 3. Intuitionistic Layered Graph Logic: Semantics and Proof Theory

Models of complex systems are widely used in the physical and social sciences, and the concept of layering, typically building upon graph-theoretic structure, is a common feature. We describe an intuitionistic substructural logic called ILGL that gives an account of layering. The logic is a bunched system, combining the usual intuitionistic connectives, together with a non-commutative, non-associative conjunction (used to capture layering) and its associated implications. We give soundness and completeness theorems for a labelled tableaux system with respect to a Kripke semantics on graphs. We then give an equivalent relational semantics, itself proven equivalent to an algebraic semantics via a representation theorem. We utilise this result in two ways. First, we prove decidability of the logic by showing the finite embeddability property holds for the algebraic semantics. Second, we prove a Stone-type duality theorem for the logic. By introducing the notions of ILGL hyperdoctrine and indexed layered frame we are able to extend this result to a predicate version of the logic and prove soundness and completeness theorems for an extension of the layered graph semantics . We indicate the utility of predicate ILGL with a resource-labelled bigraph model.

### 4. Reasoning with Finite Sets and Cardinality Constraints in SMT

We consider the problem of deciding the satisfiability of quantifier-free formulas in the theory of finite sets with cardinality constraints. Sets are a common high-level data structure used in programming; thus, such a theory is useful for modeling program constructs directly. More importantly, sets are a basic construct of mathematics and thus natural to use when formalizing the properties of computational systems. We develop a calculus describing a modular combination of a procedure for reasoning about membership constraints with a procedure for reasoning about cardinality constraints. Cardinality reasoning involves tracking how different sets overlap. For efficiency, we avoid considering Venn regions directly, as done in previous work. Instead, we develop a novel technique wherein potentially overlapping regions are considered incrementally as needed, using a graph to track the interaction among the different regions. The calculus has been designed to facilitate its implementation within SMT solvers based on the DPLL($T$) architecture. Our experimental results demonstrate that the new techniques are competitive with previous techniques and can scale much better on certain classes of problems.

### 5. Inducing syntactic cut-elimination for indexed nested sequents

The key to the proof-theoretic study of a logic is a proof calculus with a subformula property. Many different proof formalisms have been introduced (e.g. sequent, nested sequent, labelled sequent formalisms) in order to provide such calculi for the many logics of interest. The nested sequent formalism was recently generalised to indexed nested sequents in order to yield proof calculi with the subformula property for extensions of the modal logic K by (Lemmon-Scott) Geach axioms. The proofs of completeness and cut-elimination therein were semantic and intricate. Here we show that derivations in the labelled sequent formalism whose sequents are `almost treelike' correspond exactly to indexed nested sequents. This correspondence is exploited to induce syntactic proofs for indexed nested sequent calculi making use of the elegant proofs that exist for the labelled sequent calculi. A larger goal of this work is to demonstrate how specialising existing proof-theoretic transformations alleviate the need for independent proofs in each formalism. Such coercion can also be used to induce new cutfree calculi. We employ this to present the first indexed nested sequent calculi for intermediate logics.

### 6. Subsumption Algorithms for Three-Valued Geometric Resolution

In our implementation of geometric resolution, the most costly operation is subsumption testing (or matching): One has to decide for a three-valued, geometric formula, if this formula is false in a given interpretation. The formula contains only atoms with variables, equality, and existential quantifiers. The interpretation contains only atoms with constants. Because the atoms have no term structure, matching for geometric resolution is hard. We translate the matching problem into a generalized constraint satisfaction problem, and discuss several approaches for solving it efficiently, one direct algorithm and two translations to propositional SAT. After that, we study filtering techniques based on local consistency checking. Such filtering techniques can a priori refute a large percentage of generalized constraint satisfaction problems. Finally, we adapt the matching algorithms in such a way that they find solutions that use a minimal subset of the interpretation. The adaptation can be combined with every matching algorithm. The techniques presented in this paper may have applications in constraint solving independent of geometric resolution.