Expansion-Based QBF Solving Without Recursion

Abstract: In recent years, expansion-based techniques have been shown to be very powerful in theory and practice for solving quantified Boolean formulas (QBF), the extension of propositional formulas with existential and universal quantifiers over Boolean variables. Such approaches partially expand one type of variable (either existential or universal) and pass the obtained formula to a SAT solver for deciding the QBF. State-of-the-art expansion-based solvers process the given formula quantifier-block wise and recursively apply expansion until a solution is found. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm for expansion-based QBF solving that deals with the whole quantifier prefix at once. Hence recursive applications of the expansion principle are avoided. Experiments indicate that the performance of our simple approach is comparable with the state of the art of QBF solving, especially in combination with other solving techniques.