SymCon 2012 - The 12th International Workshop on Symmetry in Constraint Satisfaction Problems (SymCon'12)

A symmetry is a transformation that preserves solutions that are considered equivalent. For instance, rotating a chess board 180 degrees gives a board that is indistinguishable from the original board. Symmetry increases the apparent complexity of combinatorial problems. In the presence of symmetry, a constraint solver may waste a large amount of time considering symmetric but equivalent assignments or partial assignments. Hence, dealing with symmetry is often crucial to the success of solving such combinatorial problems efficiently.
Workshop topics include (but are not limited to):
Symmetry definition: semantic symmetry, syntactic symmetry, constraint symmetry, solution symmetry
Automatic symmetry detection: static and dynamic approaches
Global symmetry detection and elimination
Local (conditional) symmetry detection and elimination
Combining symmetry-breaking techniques
Exploiting weak forms of symmetries like "dominance" and "almost-symmetries"
Case studies of problems that exhibit interesting symmetries
Application of computational group theory techniques to symmetry breaking
Heuristics that use information about symmetry to guide search
Elimination and avoidance of symmetry by reformulation
Dynamic avoidance of symmetric states during search
Complexity analysis of symmetry-breaking techniques
Comparison of symmetry-breaking techniques in constraint programming with techniques for dealing with symmetry in other search domains
Symmetry in (quantified) Boolean formulae
Symmetry in finite model search in first-order logic
Novel exploitation of symmetry in varied search domains of interest to the CP community