Date of Award

5-7-2026

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Computing and Information Science

First Advisor

Dr. Yuliua Lierler

Abstract

This dissertation supports the formal verification of a broad class of logic programs in the Answer Set Programming (ASP) declarative programming paradigm. Formal methods for ASP are important to study in light of the wide variety of high-consequence systems which employ ASP. Furthermore, the close relationship ASP shares with other logical formalisms, such as the logic of here-and-there, and first-order and second-order logic, provides promising avenues for rigorously verifying answer set programs. Here we extend a research agenda focused on 1) transforming ASP programs into second-order formulas to facilitate writing proofs of correctness by hand; and 2) reducing these second-order representations into first-order ones to automate verification with theorem provers. In particular, this dissertation focuses on translations into classical logics for the advanced language constructs known as aggregates and conditional literals. These constructs are widely used in realistic ASP programs. By developing translation-based semantics and verification techniques for these constructs, we provide a foundation for the formal verification of a much larger class of ASP programs than the current state of the art.

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