Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
The currently fastest known algorithm for k-SAT is PPSZ named after its inventors Paturi, Pudlak, Saks, and Zane. Analyzing its running time is much easier for input formulas with a unique satisfying assignment. In this paper, we achieve three goals. First, we simplify Hertli's analysis for input formulas with multiple satisfying assignments. Second, we show a "translation result": if you improve PPSZ for k-CNF formulas with a unique satisfying assignment, you will immediately get a (weaker) improvement for general k-CNF formulas. Combining this with a result by Hertli from 2014, in which he gives an algorithm for Unique-3-SAT slightly beating PPSZ, we obtain an algorithm beating PPSZ for general 3-SAT, thus obtaining the so far best known worst-case bounds for 3-SAT.
@InProceedings{scheder_et_al:LIPIcs.CCC.2017.9,
author = {Scheder, Dominik and Steinberger, John P.},
title = {{PPSZ for General k-SAT - Making Hertli's Analysis Simpler and 3-SAT Faster}},
booktitle = {32nd Computational Complexity Conference (CCC 2017)},
pages = {9:1--9:15},
series = {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
ISBN = {978-3-95977-040-8},
ISSN = {1868-8969},
year = {2017},
volume = {79},
editor = {O'Donnell, Ryan},
publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
URL = {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2017.9},
URN = {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-75355},
doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2017.9},
annote = {Keywords: Boolean satisfiability, exponential algorithms, randomized algorithms}
}