The Relative Exponential Time Complexity of Approximate Counting Satisfying Assignments

摘要

We study the exponential time complexity of approximate counting satisfying assignments of CNFs. We reduce the problem to deciding satisfiability of a CNF. Our reduction preserves the number of variables of the input formula and thus also preserves the exponential complexity of approximate counting. Our algorithm is also similar to an algorithm which works particularly well in practice and for which no approximation guarantee is known.