Method of analytic tableaux

In proof theory, the semantic tableau (French pronunciation: ​[ta'blo]; singular: tableau; plural: tableaux), also called truth tree, is a decision procedure for sentential and related logics, and a proof procedure for formulas of first-order logic. The tableau method can also determine the satisfiability of finite sets of formulas of various logics. It is the most popular proof procedure for modal logics (Girle 2000). The method of semantic tableaux was invented by the Dutch logician Evert Willem Beth (Beth 1955) and simplified, for classical logic, by Raymond Smullyan (Smullyan 1968, 1995). It is Smullyan's simplification, ""one-sided tableaux"", that is described below. Smullyan's method has been generalized to arbitrary many-valued propositional and first-order logics by Walter Carnielli (Carnielli 1987). Tableaux can be intuitively seen as sequent systems upside-down. This symmetrical relation between tableaux and sequent systems was formally established in (Carnielli 1991).An analytic tableau has, for each node, a subformula of the formula at the origin. In other words, it is a tableau satisfying the subformula property.