A Multistage View on 2-Satisfiability

TL;DR

This paper investigates the multistage model of 2-SAT, proving NP-hardness in restricted cases and developing optimal parameterized algorithms with kernelization for solving the problem efficiently.

Contribution

It introduces the multistage 2-SAT problem, proves its NP-hardness in restricted scenarios, and provides asymptotically optimal parameterized algorithms with kernelization.

Findings

Multistage 2-SAT is NP-hard even in restricted cases.

Developed parameterized algorithms with kernelization.

Algorithms are asymptotically optimal.

Abstract

We study $q$-SAT in the multistage model, focusing on the linear-time solvable 2-SAT. Herein, given a sequence of $q$-CNF fomulas and a non-negative integer $d$, the question is whether there is a sequence of satisfying truth assignments such that for every two consecutive truth assignments, the number of variables whose values changed is at most $d$. We prove that Multistage 2-SAT is NP-hard even in quite restricted cases. Moreover, we present parameterized algorithms (including kernelization) for Multistage 2-SAT and prove them to be asymptotically optimal.