A Polynomial Time Delta-Decomposition Algorithm for Positive DNFs

Abstract

We consider the problem of decomposing a positive DNF into a conjunction of DNFs, which may share a (possibly empty) given set of variables Delta. This problem has interesting connections with traditional applications of positive DNFs, e.g., in game theory, and with the broad topic of minimization of boolean functions. We show that the finest Delta-decomposition components of a positive DNF can be computed in polynomial time and provide a decomposition algorithm based on factorization of multilinear boolean polynomials.