2008/10/27 by Robin A. Moser, Moser, Robin A.
Computer Science · Mathematics · #Data Structures and Algorithms (cs.DS) #F.2 #FOS: Computer and information sciences #G.2 #Graph theory and applications #Limits and Structures in Graph Theory #Mathematical Dynamics and Fractals #cs.DS
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0810.4812
11 pages; minor corrections
openalex publication_date 2008/10/27 · arxiv created 2008/10/29 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
The Lovasz Local Lemma [EL75] is a powerful tool to prove the existence of combinatorial objects meeting a prescribed collection of criteria. The technique can directly be applied to the satisfiability problem, yielding that a k-CNF formula in which each clause has common variables with at most 2^(k-2) other clauses is always satisfiable. All hitherto known proofs of the Local Lemma are non-constructive and do thus not provide a recipe as to how a satisfying assignment to such a formula can be efficiently found. In his breakthrough paper [Bec91], Beck demonstrated that if the neighbourhood of each clause be restricted to O(2^(k/48)), a polynomial time algorithm for the search problem exists. Alon simplified and randomized his procedure and improved the bound to O(2^(k/8)) [Alo91]. Srinivasan presented in [Sri08] a variant that achieves a bound of essentially O(2^(k/4)). In [Mos08], we improved this to O(2^(k/2)). In the present paper, we give a randomized algorithm that finds a satisfying assignment to every k-CNF formula in which each clause has a neighbourhood of at most the asymptotic optimum of 2^(k-5)-1 other clauses and that runs in expected time polynomial in the size of the formula, irrespective of k. If k is considered a constant, we can also give a deterministic variant. In contrast to all previous approaches, our analysis does not anymore invoke the standard non-constructive versions of the Local Lemma and can therefore be considered an alternative, constructive proof of it.