English

Inductive Satisfiability Certification for Universal Quantifiers and Uninterpreted Function Symbols

Logic in Computer Science 2026-02-19 v1

Abstract

The combination of uninterpreted function symbols and universal quantification occurs in many applications of automated reasoning, for example, due to their ability to reason about arrays. Yet the satisfiability of such formulas is, in general, undecidable. In practice, SMT solvers are often successful in the unsatisfiable case, using heuristics. However, in the satisfiable case, they rely on explicit model construction, which fails for formulas whose smallest model is not small enough. We introduce an alternative approach that certifies satisfiability using induction arguments, and apply it to the case of linear integer arithmetic. The resulting algorithm is able to prove satisfiability of formulas that are out of reach for current SMT solvers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.16335,
  title  = {Inductive Satisfiability Certification for Universal Quantifiers and Uninterpreted Function Symbols},
  author = {Stefan Ratschan and Anggha Nugraha and Mikoláš Janota and Marek Dančo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.16335},
  year   = {2026}
}