Weak Bases of Boolean Co-Clones

Abstract: Universal algebra and clone theory have proven to be a useful tool in the study of constraint satisfaction problems since the complexity, up to logspace reductions, is determined by the set of polymorphisms of the constraint language. For classifications where primitive positive definitions are unsuitable, such as size-preserving reductions, weaker closure operations may be necessary. In this article we consider strong partial clones which can be seen as a more fine-grained framework than Post's lattice where each clone splits into an interval of strong partial clones. We investigate these intervals and give simple relational descriptions, weak bases, of the largest elements. The weak bases have a highly regular form and are in many cases easily relatable to the smallest members in the intervals, which suggests that the lattice of strong partial clones is considerably simpler than the full lattice of partial clones.