System BV is NP-complete

AbstractSystem BV is an extension of multiplicative linear logic (MLL) with the rules mix, nullary mix, and a self-dual, non-commutative logical operator, called seq. While the rules mix and nullary mix extend the deductive system, the operator seq extends the language of MLL. Due to the operator seq, system BV extends the applications of MLL to those where sequential composition is crucial, e.g., concurrency theory. System FBV is an extension of MLL with the rules mix and nullary mix. In this paper, by relying on the fact that system BV is a conservative extension of system FBV, I show that system BV is NP-complete by encoding the 3-Partition problem in FBV. I provid a simple completeness proof of this encoding by resorting to a novel proof theoretical method for reducing the nondeterminism in proof search, which is also of independent interest