Programming guide for solving constraint satisfaction problems with tensor networks

Abstract

Constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are a class of problems that are ubiquitous in science and engineering. It features a collection of constraints specified over subsets of variables. A CSP can be solved either directly or by reducing it to other problems. This paper introduces the Julia ecosystem for solving and analyzing CSPs, focusing on the programming practices. We introduce some of the important CSPs and show how these problems are reduced to each other. We also show how to transform CSPs into tensor networks, how to optimize the tensor network contraction orders, and how to extract the solution space properties by contracting the tensor networks with generic element types. Examples are given, which include computing the entropy constant, analyzing the overlap gap property, and the reduction between CSPs.