Semantics of Division for Polynomial Solvers

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Brown, Christopher W.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866912139588927488
author Brown, Christopher W.
author_facet Brown, Christopher W.
contents How to handle division in systems that compute with logical formulas involving what would otherwise be polynomial constraints over the real numbers is a surprisingly difficult question. This paper argues that existing approaches from both the computer algebra and computational logic communities are unsatisfactory for systems that consider the satisfiability of formulas with quantifiers or that perform quantifier elimination. To address this, we propose the notion of the fair-satisfiability of a formula, use it to characterize formulas with divisions that are well-defined, meaning that they adequately guard divisions against division by zero, and provide a translation algorithm that converts a formula with divisions into a purely polynomial formula that is satisfiable if and only if the original formula is fair-satisfiable. This provides a semantics for division with some nice properties, which we describe and prove in the paper.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_00963
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Semantics of Division for Polynomial Solvers
Brown, Christopher W.
Symbolic Computation
How to handle division in systems that compute with logical formulas involving what would otherwise be polynomial constraints over the real numbers is a surprisingly difficult question. This paper argues that existing approaches from both the computer algebra and computational logic communities are unsatisfactory for systems that consider the satisfiability of formulas with quantifiers or that perform quantifier elimination. To address this, we propose the notion of the fair-satisfiability of a formula, use it to characterize formulas with divisions that are well-defined, meaning that they adequately guard divisions against division by zero, and provide a translation algorithm that converts a formula with divisions into a purely polynomial formula that is satisfiable if and only if the original formula is fair-satisfiable. This provides a semantics for division with some nice properties, which we describe and prove in the paper.
title Semantics of Division for Polynomial Solvers
topic Symbolic Computation
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.00963