The class of logic programs covered by the original definition of a stable model has the property that all stable models of a program in this class are minimal. In the course of research on answer set programming, the concept of a stable model was extended to several new programming constructs, and for some of these extensions the minimality property does not hold. We are interested in syntactic conditions on a logic program that guarantee the minimality of its stable models. This question is addressed here in the context of the general theory of stable models of first-order sentences.

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In Logic Programming, Knowledge Representation, and Nonmonotonic Reasoning: Essays Dedicated to Michael Gelfond on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, pp. 54-73 2011. Springer.

@incollection{ferraris:unpublished10, title={On the Minimality of Stable Models}, author={Paolo Ferraris and Vladimir Lifschitz}, booktitle={Logic Programming, Knowledge Representation, and Nonmonotonic Reasoning: Essays Dedicated to Michael Gelfond on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday}, publisher={Springer}, pages={54-73}, url="http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/ai-lab?ferraris:unpublished10", year={2011} }