3,608 research outputs found
Classes of representable disjoint NP-pairs
For a propositional proof system P we introduce the complexity class of all disjoint -pairs for which the disjointness of the pair is efficiently provable in the proof system P. We exhibit structural properties of proof systems which make canonical -pairs associated with these proof systems hard or complete for . Moreover, we demonstrate that non-equivalent proof systems can have equivalent canonical pairs and that depending on the properties of the proof systems different scenarios for and the reductions between the canonical pairs exist
Tuples of disjoint NP-sets
Disjoint NPUnknown control sequence '\mathsf' -pairs are a well studied complexity-theoretic concept with important applications in cryptography and propositional proof complexity. In this paper we introduce a natural generalization of the notion of disjoint NPUnknown control sequence '\mathsf' -pairs to disjoint k-tuples of NPUnknown control sequence '\mathsf' -sets for k≥2. We define subclasses of the class of all disjoint k-tuples of NPUnknown control sequence '\mathsf' -sets. These subclasses are associated with a propositional proof system and possess complete tuples which are defined from the proof system. In our main result we show that complete disjoint NPUnknown control sequence '\mathsf' -pairs exist if and only if complete disjoint k-tuples of NPUnknown control sequence '\mathsf' -sets exist for all k≥2. Further, this is equivalent to the existence of a propositional proof system in which the disjointness of all k-tuples is shortly provable. We also show that a strengthening of this conditions characterizes the existence of optimal proof systems
Making proofs without Modus Ponens: An introduction to the combinatorics and complexity of cut elimination
This paper is intended to provide an introduction to cut elimination which is
accessible to a broad mathematical audience. Gentzen's cut elimination theorem
is not as well known as it deserves to be, and it is tied to a lot of
interesting mathematical structure. In particular we try to indicate some
dynamical and combinatorial aspects of cut elimination, as well as its
connections to complexity theory. We discuss two concrete examples where one
can see the structure of short proofs with cuts, one concerning feasible
numbers and the other concerning "bounded mean oscillation" from real analysis
Consistency of circuit lower bounds with bounded theories
Proving that there are problems in that require
boolean circuits of super-linear size is a major frontier in complexity theory.
While such lower bounds are known for larger complexity classes, existing
results only show that the corresponding problems are hard on infinitely many
input lengths. For instance, proving almost-everywhere circuit lower bounds is
open even for problems in . Giving the notorious difficulty of
proving lower bounds that hold for all large input lengths, we ask the
following question: Can we show that a large set of techniques cannot prove
that is easy infinitely often? Motivated by this and related
questions about the interaction between mathematical proofs and computations,
we investigate circuit complexity from the perspective of logic.
Among other results, we prove that for any parameter it is
consistent with theory that computational class , where is one of
the pairs: and , and , and
. In other words, these theories cannot establish
infinitely often circuit upper bounds for the corresponding problems. This is
of interest because the weaker theory already formalizes
sophisticated arguments, such as a proof of the PCP Theorem. These consistency
statements are unconditional and improve on earlier theorems of [KO17] and
[BM18] on the consistency of lower bounds with
Tuples of disjoint NP-sets
Disjoint NP-pairs are a well studied complexity theoretic concept with important applications in cryptography and propositional proof complexity. In this paper we introduce a natural generalization of the notion of disjoint NP-pairs to disjoint k-tuples of NP-sets for k ≥ 2. We define subclasses of the class of all disjoint k-tuples of NP-sets. These subclasses are associated with a propositional proof system and possess complete tuples which are defined from the proof system. In our main result we show that complete disjoint NP-pairs exist if and only if complete disjoint k-tuples of NP-sets exist for all k ≥ 2. Further, this is equivalent to the existence of a propositional proof system in which the disjointness of all k-tuples is shortly provable. We also show that a strengthening of this conditions characterizes the existence of optimal proof systems
Alternation-Trading Proofs, Linear Programming, and Lower Bounds
A fertile area of recent research has demonstrated concrete polynomial time
lower bounds for solving natural hard problems on restricted computational
models. Among these problems are Satisfiability, Vertex Cover, Hamilton Path,
Mod6-SAT, Majority-of-Majority-SAT, and Tautologies, to name a few. The proofs
of these lower bounds follow a certain proof-by-contradiction strategy that we
call alternation-trading. An important open problem is to determine how
powerful such proofs can possibly be.
We propose a methodology for studying these proofs that makes them amenable
to both formal analysis and automated theorem proving. We prove that the search
for better lower bounds can often be turned into a problem of solving a large
series of linear programming instances. Implementing a small-scale theorem
prover based on this result, we extract new human-readable time lower bounds
for several problems. This framework can also be used to prove concrete
limitations on the current techniques.Comment: To appear in STACS 2010, 12 page
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