Practical Approximate Quantifier Elimination for Non-linear Real Arithmetic Show others and affiliations
2025 (English) In: Formal Methods: 26th International Symposium, FM 2024, Milan, Italy, September 9–13, 2024, Proceedings, Part I / [ed] André Platzer; Kristin Yvonne Rozier; Matteo Pradella; Matteo Rossi, Cham: Springer, 2025, p. 111-130Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Quantifier Elimination (QE) concerns finding a quantifier-free formula that is semantically equivalent to a quantified formula in a given logic. For the theory of non-linear arithmetic over reals (NRA), QE is known to be computationally challenging. In this paper, we show how QE over NRA can be solved approximately and efficiently in practice using a Boolean combination of constraints in the linear arithmetic over reals (LRA). Our approach works by approximating the solution space of a set of NRA constraints when all real variables are bounded. It combines adaptive dynamic gridding with application of Handelman's Theorem to obtain the approximation efficiently via a sequence of linear programs (LP). We provide rigorous approximation guarantees, and also proofs of soundness and completeness (under mild assumptions) of our algorithm. Interestingly, our work allows us to bootstrap on earlier work (viz. [38]) and solve quantified SMT problems over a combination of NRA and other theories, that are beyond the reach of state-of-the-art solvers. We have implemented our approach in a preprocessor for Z3 called POQER. Our experiments show that POQER+Z3EG outperforms state-of-the-art SMT solvers on non-trivial problems, adapted from a suite of benchmarks.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages Cham: Springer, 2025. p. 111-130
Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, ISSN 0302-9743, E-ISSN 1611-3349 ; 14933
National Category
Computer Sciences Algebra and Logic
Identifiers URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-549041 DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-71162-6_6 ISI: 001336893300006 Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85204630434 ISBN: 978-3-031-71161-9 (print) ISBN: 978-3-031-71162-6 (electronic) OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-549041 DiVA, id: diva2:1933294
Conference 26th International Symposium on Formal Methods (FM), Sep 09-13, 2024, Milan, Italy
2025-01-312025-01-312025-01-31 Bibliographically approved