Tree-width is a well-studied parameter of structures that measures their similarity to a tree. Many important NP-complete problems, such as Boolean satisfiability (SAT), are tractable on bounded tree-width instances. In this paper we focus on the canonical PSPACE-complete problem QBF, the fully-quantified version of SAT. It was shown by Pan and Vardi that this problem is PSPACE-complete even for formulas whose tree-width grows extremely slowly. Vardi also posed the question of whether the problem is tractable when restricted to instances of bounded tree-width. We answer this question by showing that QBF on instances with constant tree-width is PSPACE-complete.

Fixed some typos.

Tree-width is a well-studied parameter of structures that measures their similarity to a tree. Many important NP-complete problems, such as Boolean satisfiability (SAT), are tractable on bounded tree-width instances. In this paper we focus on the canonical PSPACE-complete problem QBF, the fully-quantified version of SAT. It was shown by Pan and Vardi [LICS 2006] that this problem is PSPACE-complete even for formulas whose tree-width grows extremely slowly. Vardi also posed the question of whether the problem is tractable when restricted to instances of bounded tree-width. We answer this question by showing that QBF on instances with constant tree-width is PSPACE-complete.

Tree-width is a well-studied parameter of structures that measures their similarity to a tree. Many important NP-complete problems, such as Boolean satisfiability (SAT), are tractable on bounded tree-width instances. In this paper we focus on the canonical PSPACE-complete problem QBF, the fully-quantified version of SAT. It was shown by Pan and Vardi that this problem is PSPACE-complete even for formulas whose tree-width grows extremely slowly. Vardi also posed the question of whether the problem is tractable when restricted to instances of bounded tree-width. We answer this question by showing that QBF on instances with constant tree-width is PSPACE-complete.

Minor rewriting of introduction.

Tree-width is a well-studied parameter of structures that measures their similarity to a tree. Many important NP-complete problems, such as Boolean satisfiability (SAT), are tractable on bounded tree-width instances. In this paper we focus on the canonical PSPACE-complete problem QBF, the fully-quantified version of SAT. It was shown by Pan and Vardi that this problem is PSPACE-complete even for formulas whose tree-width grows extremely slowly. Vardi also posed the question of whether the problem is tractable when restricted to instances of bounded tree-width. We answer this question by showing that QBF on instances with constant tree-width is PSPACE-complete.