Incremental Linearization for satisfiability and verification modulo nonlinear arithmetic and transcendental functions

Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) is the problem of deciding the satisfiability of a first-order formula with respect to some theory or combination of theories; Verification Modulo Theories (VMT) is the problem of analyzing the reachability for transition systems represented in terms of SMT formulae. In this article, we tackle the problems of SMT and VMT over the theories of nonlinear arithmetic over the reals (NRA) and of NRA augmented with transcendental (exponential and trigonometric) functions (NTA). We propose a new abstraction-refinement approach for SMT and VMT on NRA or NTA, called Incremental Linearization. The idea is to abstract nonlinear multiplication and transcendental functions as uninterpreted functions in an abstract space limited to linear arithmetic on the rationals with uninterpreted functions. The uninterpreted functions are incrementally axiomatized by means of upper- and lower-bounding piecewise-linear constraints. In the case of transcendental functions, particular care is required to ensure the soundness of the abstraction. The method has been implemented in the MathSAT SMT solver and in the nuXmv model checker. An extensive experimental evaluation on a wide set of benchmarks from verification and mathematics demonstrates the generality and the effectiveness of our approach.