---
title: "Splitting the atom: A new approach to Neighbourhood Interchangeability in Constraint Satisfaction Problems"
authors:
  - "James Bowen"
  - "Chavalit Likitvivatanavong"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2003/200"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2003/0200.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2003
pages: "1366-1366"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Splitting the atom: A new approach to Neighbourhood Interchangeability in Constraint Satisfaction Problems

James Bowen, Chavalit Likitvivatanavong

*Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 1366-1366.

## Abstract

We investigate interchangeability of values in CSPs, based on an approach where a single value in the domain of a variable can be treated as a combination of"sub-values". An algorithm for removing overlapping sub-values is presented. The resulting CSPs take less time to find all solutions and yield a more compactly-representable, but equivalent, solution set. Experimental results show that, especially in loose problems with large numbers of solutions, dramatic savings in search cost are achieved.