Partial Symmetry Breaking

Abstract

In this paper we define partial symmetry breaking, a concept that has been used in many previous papers without being the main topic of any research. This paper is the first systematic study of partial symmetry breaking in constraint programming. We show experimentally that performing symmetry breaking with only a subset of all symmetries can result in greatly reduced run-times. We also look at the consequences of using partial symmetry breaking in terms of variable and value ordering heuristics. Finally, different methods of selecting symmetries are considered before presenting a general algorithm for selecting subsets of symmetries.

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