Satisfiability Threshold of Random Propositional S5 Theories

Abstract

Modal logic S5, which isan important knowledge representation and reasoning paradigm, has been successfully applied in various artificial-intelligence-related domains. Similar to the random propositional theories in conjunctive clause form, the phase transition plays an important role in designing efficient algorithms for computing models of propositional S5 theories. In this paper, a new form of S5 formula is proposed, which fixes the number of modal operators and literals in the clauses of the formula. This form consists of reduced 3-3-S5 clauses of the form l1∨l2∨ξ, where ξ takes the form □(l3∨l4∨l5), ◊(l3∧l4∧l5), or a propositional literal, and li(1≤i≤5) is a classical literal. Moreover, it is demonstrated that any S5 formula can be translated into a set of reduced 3-3-S5 clauses while preserving its satisfiability. This work further investigates the probability of a random 3-c-S5 formula with c=1,2,3 being satisfied by random assignment. In particular, we show that the satisfiability threshold of random 3-1-S5 clauses is −ln2(1−Pd−Ps)ln78+Ps·ln34, where Ps and Pd denote the probabilities of different modal operators appearing in a clause. Preliminary experimental results on random 3-1-S5 formulas confirm this theoretical threshold.

Keywords

• modal logic
• phase transition
• satisfiability