Proof of the satisfiability conjecture for large k

Jian Ding, Allan Sly, Nike Sun

We establish the satisfiability threshold for random kk-SAT for all k≥k0k\ge k_0, with k0k_0 an absolute constant. That is, there exists a limiting density α∗(k)α_*(k) such that a random kk-SAT formula of clause density αα is with high probability satisfiable for α<α_*, and unsatisfiable for α>α_*. We show that the threshold α∗(k)α_*(k) is given explicitly by the one-step replica symmetry breaking prediction from statistical physics. The proof develops a new analytic method for moment calculations on random graphs, mapping a high-dimensional optimization problem to a more tractable problem of analyzing tree recursions. We believe that our method may apply to a range of random CSPs in the 1-RSB universality class.