Answer Sets for Logic Programs with Arbitrary Abstract Constraint Atoms
  In this paper, we present two alternative approaches to defining answer sets
for logic programs with arbitrary types of abstract constraint atoms (c-atoms).
These approaches generalize the fixpoint-based and the level mapping based
answer set semantics of normal logic programs to the case of logic programs
with arbitrary types of c-atoms. The results are four different answer set
definitions which are equivalent when applied to normal logic programs. The
standard fixpoint-based semantics of logic programs is generalized in two
directions, called answer set by reduct and answer set by complement. These
definitions, which differ from each other in the treatment of
negation-as-failure (naf) atoms, make use of an immediate consequence operator
to perform answer set checking, whose definition relies on the notion of
conditional satisfaction of c-atoms w.r.t. a pair of interpretations. The other
two definitions, called strongly and weakly well-supported models, are
generalizations of the notion of well-supported models of normal logic programs
to the case of programs with c-atoms. As for the case of fixpoint-based
semantics, the difference between these two definitions is rooted in the
treatment of naf atoms. We prove that answer sets by reduct (resp. by
complement) are equivalent to weakly (resp. strongly) well-supported models of
a program, thus generalizing the theorem on the correspondence between stable
models and well-supported models of a normal logic program to the class of
programs with c-atoms. We show that the newly defined semantics coincide with
previously introduced semantics for logic programs with monotone c-atoms, and
they extend the original answer set semantics of normal logic programs. We also
study some properties of answer sets of programs with c-atoms, and relate our
definitions to several semantics for logic programs with aggregates presented
in the literature.
