williamson matrix
SAT Solvers and Computer Algebra Systems: A Powerful Combination for Mathematics
Bright, Curtis, Kotsireas, Ilias, Ganesh, Vijay
Over the last few decades, many distinct lines of research aimed at automating mathematics have been developed, including computer algebra systems (CASs) for mathematical modelling, automated theorem provers for first-order logic, SAT/SMT solvers aimed at program verification, and higher-order proof assistants for checking mathematical proofs. More recently, some of these lines of research have started to converge in complementary ways. One success story is the combination of SAT solvers and CASs (SAT+CAS) aimed at resolving mathematical conjectures. Many conjectures in pure and applied mathematics are not amenable to traditional proof methods. Instead, they are best addressed via computational methods that involve very large combinatorial search spaces. SAT solvers are powerful methods to search through such large combinatorial spaces---consequently, many problems from a variety of mathematical domains have been reduced to SAT in an attempt to resolve them. However, solvers traditionally lack deep repositories of mathematical domain knowledge that can be crucial to pruning such large search spaces. By contrast, CASs are deep repositories of mathematical knowledge but lack efficient general search capabilities. By combining the search power of SAT with the deep mathematical knowledge in CASs we can solve many problems in mathematics that no other known methods seem capable of solving. We demonstrate the success of the SAT+CAS paradigm by highlighting many conjectures that have been disproven, verified, or partially verified using our tool MathCheck. These successes indicate that the paradigm is positioned to become a standard method for solving problems requiring both a significant amount of search and deep mathematical reasoning. For example, the SAT+CAS paradigm has recently been used by Heule, Kauers, and Seidl to find many new algorithms for $3\times3$ matrix multiplication.
A SAT+CAS Method for Enumerating Williamson Matrices of Even Order
Bright, Curtis (University of Waterloo) | Kotsireas, Ilias (Wilfrid Laurier University) | Ganesh, Vijay (University of Waterloo)
We present for the first time an exhaustive enumeration of Williamson matrices of even order n < 65. The search method relies on the novel SAT+CAS paradigm of coupling SAT solvers with computer algebra systems so as to take advantage of the advances made in both the field of satisfiability checking and the field of symbolic computation. Additionally, we use a programmatic SAT solver which allows conflict clauses to be learned programmatically, through a piece of code specifically tailored to the domain area. Prior to our work, Williamson matrices had only been enumerated for odd orders n < 60, so our work increases the bounds that Williamson matrices have been enumerated up to and provides the first enumeration of Williamson matrices of even order. Our results show that Williamson matrices of even order tend to be much more abundant than those of odd orders. In particular, Williamson matrices exist for every even order n < 65 but do not exist in orders 35, 47, 53, and 59.