An invitation to the promise constraint satisfaction problem

Abstract

The study of the complexity of the constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), centred around the Feder-Vardi Dichotomy Conjecture, has been very prominent in the last two decades. After a long concerted effort and many partial results, the Dichotomy Conjecture has been proved in 2017 independently by Bulatov and Zhuk. At about the same time, a vast generalisation of CSP, called promise CSP, has started to gain prominence. In this survey, we explain the importance of promise CSP and highlight many new very interesting features that the study of promise CSP has brought to light. The complexity classification quest for the promise CSP is wide open, and we argue that, despite the promise CSP being more general, this quest is rather more accessible to a wide range of researchers than the dichotomy-led study of the CSP has been.