Lifting with Simple Gadgets and Applications to Circuit and Proof Complexity

We significantly strengthen and generalize the theorem lifting Nullstellensatz degree to monotone span program size by Pitassi and Robere (2018) so that it works for any gadget with high enough rank, in particular, for useful gadgets such as equality and greater-than. We apply our generalized theorem to solve two open problems: * We present the first result that demonstrates a separation in proof power for cutting planes with unbounded versus polynomially bounded coefficients. Specifically, we exhibit CNF formulas that can be refuted in quadratic length and constant line space in cutting planes with unbounded coefficients, but for which there are no refutations in subexponential length and subpolynomial line space if coefficients are restricted to be of polynomial magnitude. * We give the first explicit separation between monotone Boolean formulas and monotone real formulas. Specifically, we give an explicit family of functions that can be computed with monotone real formulas of nearly linear size but require monotone Boolean formulas of exponential size. Previously only a non-explicit separation was known. An important technical ingredient, which may be of independent interest, is that we show that the Nullstellensatz degree of refuting the pebbling formula over a DAG G over any field coincides exactly with the reversible pebbling price of G. In particular, this implies that the standard decision tree complexity and the parity decision tree complexity of the corresponding falsified clause search problem are equal

Recognizing and Drawing IC-planar Graphs

IC-planar graphs are those graphs that admit a drawing where no two crossed edges share an end-vertex and each edge is crossed at most once. They are a proper subfamily of the 1-planar graphs. Given an embedded IC-planar graph $G$ with $n$ vertices, we present an $O(n)$-time algorithm that computes a straight-line drawing of $G$ in quadratic area, and an $O(n^3)$-time algorithm that computes a straight-line drawing of $G$ with right-angle crossings in exponential area. Both these area requirements are worst-case optimal. We also show that it is NP-complete to test IC-planarity both in the general case and in the case in which a rotation system is fixed for the input graph. Furthermore, we describe a polynomial-time algorithm to test whether a set of matching edges can be added to a triangulated planar graph such that the resulting graph is IC-planar

Formal Verification of Zero-Knowledge Circuits

Zero-knowledge circuits are sets of equality constraints over arithmetic expressions interpreted in a prime field; they are used to encode computations in cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs. We make the following contributions to the problem of ensuring that a circuit correctly encodes a computation: a formal framework for circuit correctness; an ACL2 library for prime fields; an ACL2 model of the existing R1CS (Rank-1 Constraint Systems) formalism to represent circuits, along with ACL2 and Axe tools to verify circuits of this form; a novel PFCS (Prime Field Constraint Systems) formalism to represent hierarchically structured circuits, along with an ACL2 model of it and ACL2 tools to verify circuits of this form in a compositional and scalable way; verification of circuits, ranging from simple to complex; and discovery of bugs and optimizations in existing zero-knowledge systems.Comment: In Proceedings ACL2-2023, arXiv:2311.0837

Lifting with Sunflowers

Query-to-communication lifting theorems translate lower bounds on query complexity to lower bounds for the corresponding communication model. In this paper, we give a simplified proof of deterministic lifting (in both the tree-like and dag-like settings). Our proof uses elementary counting together with a novel connection to the sunflower lemma. In addition to a simplified proof, our approach opens up a new avenue of attack towards proving lifting theorems with improved gadget size - one of the main challenges in the area. Focusing on one of the most widely used gadgets - the index gadget - existing lifting techniques are known to require at least a quadratic gadget size. Our new approach combined with robust sunflower lemmas allows us to reduce the gadget size to near linear. We conjecture that it can be further improved to polylogarithmic, similar to the known bounds for the corresponding robust sunflower lemmas

On Disperser/Lifting Properties of the Index and Inner-Product Functions

Query-to-communication lifting theorems, which connect the query complexity of a Boolean function to the communication complexity of an associated "lifted" function obtained by composing the function with many copies of another function known as a gadget, have been instrumental in resolving many open questions in computational complexity. A number of important complexity questions could be resolved if we could make substantial improvements in the input size required for lifting with the Index function, which is a universal gadget for lifting, from its current near-linear size down to polylogarithmic in the number of inputs N of the original function or, ideally, constant. The near-linear size bound was recently shown by Lovett, Meka, Mertz, Pitassi and Zhang [Shachar Lovett et al., 2022] using a recent breakthrough improvement on the Sunflower Lemma to show that a certain graph associated with an Index function of that size is a disperser. They also stated a conjecture about the Index function that is essential for further improvements in the size required for lifting with Index using current techniques. In this paper we prove the following; - The conjecture of Lovett et al. is false when the size of the Index gadget is less than logarithmic in N. - The same limitation applies to the Inner-Product function. More precisely, the Inner-Product function, which is known to satisfy the disperser property at size O(log N), also does not have this property when its size is less than log N. - Notwithstanding the above, we prove a lifting theorem that applies to Index gadgets of any size at least 4 and yields lower bounds for a restricted class of communication protocols in which one of the players is limited to sending parities of its inputs. - Using a modification of the same idea with improved lifting parameters we derive a strong lifting theorem from decision tree size to parity decision tree size. We use this, in turn, to derive a general lifting theorem in proof complexity from tree-resolution size to tree-like Res(?) refutation size, which yields many new exponential lower bounds on such proofs

Extremely Deep Proofs

We further the study of supercritical tradeoffs in proof and circuit complexity, which is a type of tradeoff between complexity parameters where restricting one complexity parameter forces another to exceed its worst-case upper bound. In particular, we prove a new family of supercritical tradeoffs between depth and size for Resolution, Res(k), and Cutting Planes proofs. For each of these proof systems we construct, for each c ? n^{1-?}, a formula with n^{O(c)} clauses and n variables that has a proof of size n^{O(c)} but in which any proof of size no more than roughly exponential in n^{1-?}/c must necessarily have depth ? n^c. By setting c = o(n^{1-?}) we therefore obtain exponential lower bounds on proof depth; this far exceeds the trivial worst-case upper bound of n. In doing so we give a simplified proof of a supercritical depth/width tradeoff for tree-like Resolution from [Alexander A. Razborov, 2016]. Finally, we outline several conjectures that would imply similar supercritical tradeoffs between size and depth in circuit complexity via lifting theorems

Lifting to Parity Decision Trees via Stifling

We show that the deterministic decision tree complexity of a (partial) function or relation f lifts to the deterministic parity decision tree (PDT) size complexity of the composed function/relation f ◦ g as long as the gadget g satisfies a property that we call stifling. We observe that several simple gadgets of constant size, like Indexing on 3 input bits, Inner Product on 4 input bits, Majority on 3 input bits and random functions, satisfy this property. It can be shown that existing randomized communication lifting theorems ([Göös, Pitassi, Watson. SICOMP'20], [Chattopadhyay et al. SICOMP'21]) imply PDT-size lifting. However there are two shortcomings of this approach: first they lift randomized decision tree complexity of f, which could be exponentially smaller than its deterministic counterpart when either f is a partial function or even a total search problem. Second, the size of the gadgets in such lifting theorems are as large as logarithmic in the size of the input to f. Reducing the gadget size to a constant is an important open problem at the frontier of current research. Our result shows that even a random constant-size gadget does enable lifting to PDT size. Further, it also yields the first systematic way of turning lower bounds on the width of tree-like resolution proofs of the unsatisfiability of constant-width CNF formulas to lower bounds on the size of tree-like proofs in the resolution with parity system, i.e., Res(☉), of the unsatisfiability of closely related constant-width CNF formulas

Lifting with Inner Functions of Polynomial Discrepancy

Lifting theorems are theorems that bound the communication complexity of a composed function f?g? in terms of the query complexity of f and the communication complexity of g. Such theorems constitute a powerful generalization of direct-sum theorems for g, and have seen numerous applications in recent years. We prove a new lifting theorem that works for every two functions f,g such that the discrepancy of g is at most inverse polynomial in the input length of f. Our result is a significant generalization of the known direct-sum theorem for discrepancy, and extends the range of inner functions g for which lifting theorems hold