Technical Report 2007-032

Structural Symmetry Breaking for Constraint Satisfaction Problems

Pierre Flener, Justin Pearson, Meinolf Sellmann, Pascal Van Hentenryck, and Magnus Ågren

November 2007

Abstract:
In recent years, symmetry breaking for constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) has attracted considerable attention. Various general schemes have been proposed to eliminate symmetries. In general, these schemes may take exponential space or time to eliminate all the symmetries. We identify several classes of CSPs that encompass many practical problems and for which symmetry breaking for various forms of value or variable interchangeability is tractable using dedicated search procedures. We also show the limits of efficient symmetry breaking for such dominance-detection schemes by proving intractability results for some classes of CSPs.

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