Sharpened lower bounds for cut elimination

We present sharpened lower bounds on the size of cut free proofs for first-order logic. Prior lower bounds for eliminating cuts from a proof established superexponential lower bounds as a stack of exponentials, with the height of the stack proportional to the maximum depth d of the formulas in the original proof. Our new lower bounds remove the constant of proportionality, giving an exponential stack of height equal to d − O(1). The proof method is based on more efficiently expressing the Gentzen-Solovay cut formulas as low depth formulas

Corrected upper bounds for free-cut elimination

Free-cut elimination allows cut elimination to be carried out in the presence of non-logical axioms. Formulas in a proof are anchored provided they originate in a non-logical axiom or non-logical inference. This paper corrects and strengthens earlier upper bounds on the size of free-cut elimination. The correction requires that the notion of a free-cut be modified so that a cut formula is anchored provided that all of its introductions are anchored, instead of only requiring that one of its introductions is anchored. With the correction, the originally proved size upper bounds remain unchanged. These results also apply to partial cut elimination. We also apply these bounds to elimination of cuts in propositional logic.If the non-logical inferences are closed under cut and infer only atomic formulas, then all cuts can be eliminated. This extends earlier results of Takeuti and of Negri and von Plato