One More Occurrence of Variables Makes Satisfiability Jump From Trivial to NP-Complete

A Boolean formula in a conjunctive normal form is called a $(k,s)$ – formula if every clause contains exactly k variables and every variable occurs in at most s clauses. The $(k,s)$–${\text{SAT}}$ problem is the SATISFIABILITY problem restricted to $(k,s)$–formulas. It is proved that for every $k \geqslant 3$ there is an integer $f(k)$ such that $(k,s)$–${\text{SAT}}$ is trivial for $s \leqslant f(k)$ (because every $(k,s)$–formula is satisfiable) and is NP-complete for $s \geqslant f(k) + 1$. Moreover, $f(k)$ grows exponentially with k, namely, $\lfloor {{{2^k } / {ek}}} \rfloor \leqslant f(k) \leqslant 2^{k - 1} - 2^{k - 4} - 1$ for $k \geqslant 4$.