Lower bounds for the polynomial calculus and the Gröbner basis algorithm

Razborov (1996) recently proved that polynomial calculus proofs of the pigeonhole principle must have degree at least ⌈n/2⌉ + 1 over any field. We present a simplified proof of the same result.?Furthermore, we show a matching upper bound on polynomial calculus proofs of the pigeonhole principle for any field of suficiently large characteristic, and an ⌈n/2⌉ + 1 lower bound for any subset sum problem over the field of reals.?We show that these degree lower bounds also translate into lower bounds on the number of monomials in any polynomial calculus proof, and hence on the running time of most implementations of the Gr?bner basis algorithm. Received: October 14, 1997.     

Hard examples for the bounded depth Frege proof system

We prove exponential lower bounds on the size of a bounded depth Frege proof of a Tseitin graph-based contradiction, whenever the underlying graph is an expander. This is the first example of a contradiction, naturally formalized as a 3-CNF, that has no short bounded depth Frege proofs. Previously, lower bounds of this type were known only for the pigeonhole principle and for Tseitin contradictions based on complete graphs.Our proof is a novel reduction of a Tseitin formula of an expander graph to the pigeonhole principle, in a manner resembling that done by Fu and Urquhart for complete graphs.In the proof we introduce a general method for removing extension variables without significantly increasing the proof size, which may be interesting in its own right.     

Resolution cannot polynomially simulate compressed-BFS

Many algorithms for Boolean satisfiability (SAT) work within the framework of resolution as a proof system, and thus on unsatisfiable instances they can be viewed as attempting to find proofs by resolution. However it has been known since the 1980s that every resolution proof of the pigeonhole principle (PHP_n^m), suitably encoded as a CNF instance, includes exponentially many steps [18]. Therefore SAT solvers based upon the DLL procedure [12] or the DP procedure [13] must take exponential time. Polynomial-sized proofs of the pigeonhole principle exist for different proof systems, but general-purpose SAT solvers often remain confined to resolution. This result is in correlation with empirical evidence. Previously, we introduced the Compressed-BFS algorithm to solve the SAT decision problem. In an earlier work [27], an implementation of a Compressed-BFS algorithm empirically solved instances in (n⁴) time. Here, we add to this claim, and show analytically that these instances are solvable in polynomial time by Compressed-BFS. Thus the class of tautologies efficiently provable by Compressed-BFS is different than that of any resolution-based procedure. We hope that the details of our complexity analysis shed some light on the proof system implied by Compressed-BFS. Our proof focuses on structural invariants within the compressed data structure that stores collections of sets of open clauses during the Compressed-BFS algorithm. We bound the size of this data structure, as well as the overall memory, by a polynomial. We then use this to show that the overall runtime is bounded by a polynomial.     

Lower Bounds for the Weak Pigeonhole Principle and Random Formulas beyond Resolution

We work with an extension of Resolution, called Res(2), that allows clauses with conjunctions of two literals. In this system there are rules to introduce and eliminate such conjunctions. We prove that the weak pigeonhole principle PHP^cn_n and random unsatisfiable CNF formulas require exponential-size proofs in this system. This is the strongest system beyond Resolution for which such lower bounds are known. As a consequence to the result about the weak pigeonhole principle, Res(log) is exponentially more powerful than Res(2). Also we prove that Resolution cannot polynomially simulate Res(2) and that Res(2) does not have feasible monotone interpolation solving an open problem posed by Krají ek.     

Algebraic proofs over noncommutative formulas

We study possible formulations of algebraic propositional proof systems operating with noncommutative formulas. We observe that a simple formulation gives rise to systems at least as strong as Frege, yielding a semantic way to define a Cook-Reckhow (i.e., polynomially verifiable) algebraic analog of Frege proofs, different from that given in Buss et al. (1997) and Grigoriev and Hirsch (2003). We then turn to an apparently weaker system, namely, polynomial calculus (PC) where polynomials are written as ordered formulas (PC over ordered formulas, for short). Given some fixed linear order on variables, an arithmetic formula is ordered if for each of its product gates the left subformula contains only variables that are less-than or equal, according to the linear order, than the variables in the right subformula of the gate. We show that PC over ordered formulas (when the base field is of zero characteristic) is strictly stronger than resolution, polynomial calculus and polynomial calculus with resolution (PCR), and admits polynomial-size refutations for the pigeonhole principle and Tseitin?s formulas. We conclude by proposing an approach for establishing lower bounds on PC over ordered formulas proofs, and related systems, based on properties of lower bounds on noncommutative formulas (Nisan, 1991).The motivation behind this work is developing techniques incorporating rank arguments (similar to those used in arithmetic circuit complexity) for establishing lower bounds on propositional proofs.     

Lifting lower bounds for tree-like proofs

It is known that constant-depth Frege proofs of some tautologies require exponential size. No such lower bound result is known for more general proof systems. We consider tree-like sequent calculus proofs in which formulas can contain modular connectives and only the cut formulas are restricted to be of constant depth. Under a plausible hardness assumption concerning small-depth Boolean circuits, we prove exponential lower bounds for such proofs. We prove these lower bounds directly from the computational hardness assumption. We start with a lower bound for cut-free proofs and “lift” it so it applies to proofs with constant-depth cuts. By using the same approach, we obtain the following additional results. We provide a much simpler proof of a known unconditional lower bound in the case where modular connectives are not used. We establish a conditional exponential separation between the power of constant-depth proofs that use different modular connectives. We show that these tree-like proofs with constant-depth cuts cannot polynomially simulate similar dag-like proofs, even when the dag-like proofs are cut-free. We present a new proof of the non-finite axiomatizability of the theory of bounded arithmetic I Δ₀(R). Finally, under a plausible hardness assumption concerning the polynomial-time hierarchy, we show that the hierarchy \({G_i^*}\) of quantified propositional proof systems does not collapse.     

Lower bounds for the polynomial calculus

We show that polynomial calculus proofs (sometimes also called Groebner proofs) of the pigeonhole principle must have degree at least over any field. This is the first non-trivial lower bound on the degree of polynomial calculus proofs obtained without using unproved complexity assumptions. We also show that for some modifications of , expressible by polynomials of at most logarithmic degree, our bound can be improved to linear in the number of variables. Finally, we show that for any Boolean function in n variables, every polynomial calculus proof of the statement “ cannot be computed by any circuit of size t,” must have degree . Loosely speaking, this means that low degree polynomial calculus proofs do not prove . Received: January 15, 1997.     

Lower bounds for maximal and convex layers problems

In this paper we derive tight lower bounds for the maximal and convex layers problems in the plane. Our lower bound proofs for the maxima problem and convex hull problem are simpler than those previously known. We also obtain an (nlog n) lower bound for the maximal depth problem, and the convex depth problem, when the points are given in sorted order of their x-coordinates.     

A lower bound for sorting networks based on the shuffle permutation

We prove an (lg² n/lg lgn) lower bound for the depth ofn-input sorting networks based on the shuffle permutation. The best previously known lower bound was the trivial (lgn) bound, while the best upper bound is given by Batcher's (lg² n)-depth bitonic sorting network. The proof technique employed in the lower bound argument may be of independent interest.C. G. Plaxton was supported by NSF Research Initiation Award CCR-9111591, and the Texas Advanced Research Program under Grant No. 003658-480. T. Suel was supported by the Texas Advanced Research Program under Grant No. 003658-480, and by an MCD Fellowship of the University of Texas at Austin.     

Proof complexity in algebraic systems and bounded depth Frege systems with modular counting

We prove a lower bound of the formN ⁽¹⁾ on the degree of polynomials in a Nullstellensatz refutation of theCount _q polynomials over _m , whereq is a prime not dividingm. In addition, we give an explicit construction of a degreeN ⁽¹⁾ design for theCount _q principle over _m . As a corollary, using Beameet al. (1994) we obtain a lower bound of the form 2 ^N(1) for the number of formulas in a constant-depth Frege proof of the modular counting principleCount _q ^N from instances of the counting principleCount _m ^M .We discuss the polynomial calculus proof system and give a method of converting tree-like polynomial calculus derivations into low degree Nullstellensatz derivations.Further we shwo that a lower bound for proofs in a bounded depth Frege system in the language with the modular counting connectiveMOD _p follows from a lower bound on the degree of Nullstellensatz proofs with a constant number of levels of extension axioms, where the extension axioms comprise a formalization of the approximation method of Razborov (1987) and Smolensky (1987) (in fact, these two proof systems are basically equivalent).     

A lower bound for randomized algebraic decision trees

We prove the firstnontrivial (andsuperlinear) lower bounds on the depth ofrandomized algebraic decision trees (with two-sided error) for problems being finite unions of hyperplanes and intersections of halfspaces, solving a long standing open problem. As an application, among other things, we derive, for the first time, an (n ²)randomized lower bound for theKnapsack Problem, and an (n logn)randomized lower bound for theElement Distinctness Problem which were previously known only for deterministic algebraic decision trees. It is worth noting that for the languages being finite unions of hyperplanes our proof method yields also a new elementary lower bound technique for deterministic algebraic decision trees without making use of Milnor's bound on Betti number of algebraic varieties.     

Parameterized Proof Complexity

We propose a proof-theoretic approach for gaining evidence that certain parameterized problems are not fixed-parameter tractable. We consider proofs that witness that a given propositional formula cannot be satisfied by a truth assignment that sets at most k variables to true, considering k as the parameter (we call such a formula a parameterized contradiction). One could separate the parameterized complexity classes FPT and W[SAT] by showing that there is no fpt-bounded parameterized proof system for parameterized contradictions, i.e., that there is no proof system that admits proofs of size f(k)n ^O(1) where f is a computable function and n represents the size of the propositional formula. By way of a first step, we introduce the system of parameterized tree-like resolution and show that this system is not fpt-bounded. Indeed, we give a general result on the size of shortest tree-like resolution proofs of parameterized contradictions that uniformly encode first-order principles over a universe of size n. We establish a dichotomy theorem that splits the exponential case of Riis’s complexity gap theorem into two subcases, one that admits proofs of size f(k)n ^O(1) and one that does not. We also discuss how the set of parameterized contradictions may be embedded into the set of (ordinary) contradictions by the addition of new axioms. When embedded into general (DAG-like) resolution, we demonstrate that the pigeonhole principle has a proof of size 2 ^k n ². This contrasts with the case of tree-like resolution where the embedded pigeonhole principle falls into the “non-FPT” category of our dichotomy.     

Straight-line programs and torsion points on elliptic curves

In this paper, we show several connections between the L-conjecture, proposed by Bürgisser, and the boundedness theorem for the torsion points on elliptic curves. Assuming the WL-conjecture, which is a much weaker version of the L-conjecture, a sharper bound is obtained for the number of torsion points over extensions of k on an elliptic curve over a number field k, which improves Massers result. It is also shown that the Torsion Theorem for elliptic curves follows directly from the WL-conjecture. Since the current proof of the Torsion Theorem for elliptic curves uses considerable machinery from arithmetic geometry, and the WL-conjecture differs from the trivial lower bound only at a constant factor, these results provide an interesting example where increasing the constant factor in a trivial lower bound of straight-line complexity is very difficult. Our results suggest that the Torsion Theorem may be viewed as a lower bound result in algebraic complexity, and a lot can be learned from the proof of the Uniform Boundedness Theorem to construct the proofs of the WL-conjecture or even the L-conjecture.     

Short proofs of the pigeonhole formulas based on the connection method

Quadratic proofs of pigeonhole formulas are presented using connection method proof techniques. The interest of this result derives from the fact that for this class of formulas exponential lower bounds are known for the length of resolution refutations.     

A lower bound for the pigeonhole principle in tree-like Resolution by asymmetric Prover-Delayer games

In this note we show that the asymmetric Prover-Delayer game developed in Beyersdorff et al. (2010) [2] for Parameterized Resolution is also applicable to other tree-like proof systems. In particular, we use this asymmetric Prover-Delayer game to show a lower bound of the form ²Ω(nlogn) for the pigeonhole principle in tree-like Resolution. This gives a new and simpler proof of the same lower bound established by Iwama and Miyazaki (1999) [7] and Dantchev and Riis (2001) [5].     

Short proofs for tricky formulas

Summary The object of this paper is to demonstrate how certain tricky mathematical arguments can be encoded as short formal proofs for the propositional tautologies representing the mathematical statements. Using resolution as a base proof system for the propositional calculus, we exhibit these short proofs under resolution augmented by one of two principles: the principle of extension, originally suggested by Tseitin, and the principle of symmetry, introduced in this paper. These short proofs illustrate the power of extension and symmetry in theorem proving.The principle of extension allows the introduction of auxiliary variables to represent intermediate formulas so that the length of a proof can be significantly reduced by manipulating these variables instead of the formulas that they stand for. Symmetry, on the other hand, allows one to recognize that a tautology remains invariant under certain permutations of variable names, and use that information to avoid repeated independent derivations of intermediate formulas that are merely permutational variants of one another.First we show that a number of inductive arguments can be encoded as short formal proofs using either extension or symmetry. We provide the details for the tautologies derived by encoding the statement, An acyclic digraph on n vertices must have a source. We then consider the familiar checkerboard puzzle which asserts that a checkerboard, two of whose diagonally opposite corner squares are removed, cannot be perfectly covered with dominoes. We demonstrate short proofs for the tautologies derived from the above assertion, using extension to mimic the tricky informal argument. Finally, we consider statements asserting the Ramsey property of numbers much larger than the critical Ramsey numbers. We show that the proof of Ramsey's theorem can be imitated using the principle of symmetry to yield short proofs for these tautologies.The main theme of the paper is that both extension and symmetry are very powerful augmentations to resolution. We leave open whether either extension or symmetry can polynomially simulate the other.This work was performed while the author was with the General Electric Research Center     

The most nonelementary theory

We give a direct proof by generic reduction that testing validity of formulas in a decidable rudimentary theory Ω of finite typed sets (Henkin, Fundamenta Mathematicæ 52 (1963) 323–344) requires space and time exceeding infinitely often(1)where n denotes the length of input. This gives the highest currently known lower bound for a decidable logical theory and affirmatively settles Problem 10.13 from (Compton and Henson, Ann. Pure Applied Logic 48 (1990) 1–79):

Is there a “natural” decidable theory with a lower bound of the form exp_∞(f(n)), where f is not linearly bounded?

The highest previously known lower (and upper) bounds for “natural” decidable theories, like WS1S, S2S, are of the form exp_∞(dn), with just linearly growing stacks of twos.Originally, the lower bound (1) for Ω was settled in (12th Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS’97), 1997, 294–305) using the powerful uniform lower bounds method due to Compton and Henson, and probably would never be discovered otherwise. Although very concise, the original proof has certain gaps, because the method was pushed out of the limits it was originally designed and intended for, and some hidden assumptions were violated. This results in slightly weaker bounds—the stack of twos in (1) grows subexponentially, but superpolynomially, namely, as for formulas with fixed quantifier prefix, or as 2^cn/log(n) for formulas with varying prefix. The independent direct proof presented in this paper closes the gaps and settles the originally claimed lower bound (1) for the minimally typed, succinct version of Ω.