Title: Exponential Lower Bounds for the PPSZ k-SAT Algorithm

Speaker: Dominik Scheder (Aarhus University, Denmark)

Time: 15:00, Thursday, October 18, 2012

Venue: Lecture Room, 3rd Floor, Building #5, State Key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Abstract:
In 1998, Paturi, Pudlak, Saks, and Zane presented PPSZ, an elegant randomized algorithm for k-SAT. Fourteen years on, this algorithm is still the fastest known worst-case algorithm. We give the first nontrivial lower bounds on its running time. We show that its worst case running time is at least 2^(c * n), where c is a constant depending on k that converges to 1 as k grows.

Joint work with Shiteng Chen, Navid Talebanfard, and Bangsheng Tang.

Bio:
-- in 2011 he got by PhD at ETH Zürich
-- since then a postdoc in Aarhus, Denmark
-- right now visiting IIIS Tsinghua University