In this paper, bounded model checking of asynchronous concurrent
systems is introduced as a promising application area for answer set
programming. As the model of asynchronous systems a generalisation
of communicating automata, 1-safe Petri nets, are used. It is shown
how a 1-safe Petri net and a requirement on the behaviour of the net
can be translated into a logic program such that the bounded model
checking problem for the net can be solved by computing stable
models of the corresponding program. The use of the stable model
semantics leads to compact encodings of bounded reachability and
deadlock detection tasks as well as the more general problem of
bounded model checking of linear temporal logic. Correctness proofs
of the devised translations are given, and some experimental results
using the translation and the Smodels system are presented.