Rigid E-unification is NP-complete
Jean H. Gallier, Wayne Snyder, Paliath Narendran, David A. Plaisted · 2003
Rigid E-unification is a restricted kind of unification modulo equational theories, or E-unification, that arises naturally in extending P. Andrews' (1981) theorem-proving method of mating to first-order languages with equality. It is shown that rigid E-unification is NP-complete and that finite complete sets of rigid E-unifiers always exist. As a consequence, deciding whether a family of mated sets is an equational mating is an NP-complete problem. Some implications of this result regarding the complexity of theorem proving in first-order logic with equality are discussed.>