2,251 research outputs found
Resolution over Linear Equations and Multilinear Proofs
We develop and study the complexity of propositional proof systems of varying
strength extending resolution by allowing it to operate with disjunctions of
linear equations instead of clauses. We demonstrate polynomial-size refutations
for hard tautologies like the pigeonhole principle, Tseitin graph tautologies
and the clique-coloring tautologies in these proof systems. Using the
(monotone) interpolation by a communication game technique we establish an
exponential-size lower bound on refutations in a certain, considerably strong,
fragment of resolution over linear equations, as well as a general polynomial
upper bound on (non-monotone) interpolants in this fragment.
We then apply these results to extend and improve previous results on
multilinear proofs (over fields of characteristic 0), as studied in
[RazTzameret06]. Specifically, we show the following:
1. Proofs operating with depth-3 multilinear formulas polynomially simulate a
certain, considerably strong, fragment of resolution over linear equations.
2. Proofs operating with depth-3 multilinear formulas admit polynomial-size
refutations of the pigeonhole principle and Tseitin graph tautologies. The
former improve over a previous result that established small multilinear proofs
only for the \emph{functional} pigeonhole principle. The latter are different
than previous proofs, and apply to multilinear proofs of Tseitin mod p graph
tautologies over any field of characteristic 0.
We conclude by connecting resolution over linear equations with extensions of
the cutting planes proof system.Comment: 44 page
On monotone circuits with local oracles and clique lower bounds
We investigate monotone circuits with local oracles [K., 2016], i.e.,
circuits containing additional inputs that can perform
unstructured computations on the input string . Let be
the locality of the circuit, a parameter that bounds the combined strength of
the oracle functions , and
be the set of -cliques and the set of complete -partite graphs,
respectively (similarly to [Razborov, 1985]). Our results can be informally
stated as follows.
1. For an appropriate extension of depth- monotone circuits with local
oracles, we show that the size of the smallest circuits separating
(triangles) and (complete bipartite graphs) undergoes two phase
transitions according to .
2. For , arbitrary depth, and , we
prove that the monotone circuit size complexity of separating the sets
and is , under a certain restrictive
assumption on the local oracle gates.
The second result, which concerns monotone circuits with restricted oracles,
extends and provides a matching upper bound for the exponential lower bounds on
the monotone circuit size complexity of -clique obtained by Alon and Boppana
(1987).Comment: Updated acknowledgements and funding informatio
A feasible interpolation for random resolution
Random resolution, defined by Buss, Kolodziejczyk and Thapen (JSL, 2014), is
a sound propositional proof system that extends the resolution proof system by
the possibility to augment any set of initial clauses by a set of randomly
chosen clauses (modulo a technical condition). We show how to apply the general
feasible interpolation theorem for semantic derivations of Krajicek (JSL, 1997)
to random resolution. As a consequence we get a lower bound for random
resolution refutations of the clique-coloring formulas.Comment: Preprint April 2016, revised September and October 201
On SAT representations of XOR constraints
We study the representation of systems S of linear equations over the
two-element field (aka xor- or parity-constraints) via conjunctive normal forms
F (boolean clause-sets). First we consider the problem of finding an
"arc-consistent" representation ("AC"), meaning that unit-clause propagation
will fix all forced assignments for all possible instantiations of the
xor-variables. Our main negative result is that there is no polysize
AC-representation in general. On the positive side we show that finding such an
AC-representation is fixed-parameter tractable (fpt) in the number of
equations. Then we turn to a stronger criterion of representation, namely
propagation completeness ("PC") --- while AC only covers the variables of S,
now all the variables in F (the variables in S plus auxiliary variables) are
considered for PC. We show that the standard translation actually yields a PC
representation for one equation, but fails so for two equations (in fact
arbitrarily badly). We show that with a more intelligent translation we can
also easily compute a translation to PC for two equations. We conjecture that
computing a representation in PC is fpt in the number of equations.Comment: 39 pages; 2nd v. improved handling of acyclic systems, free-standing
proof of the transformation from AC-representations to monotone circuits,
improved wording and literature review; 3rd v. updated literature,
strengthened treatment of monotonisation, improved discussions; 4th v. update
of literature, discussions and formulations, more details and examples;
conference v. to appear LATA 201
Lower Bounds for Monotone Counting Circuits
A {+,x}-circuit counts a given multivariate polynomial f, if its values on
0-1 inputs are the same as those of f; on other inputs the circuit may output
arbitrary values. Such a circuit counts the number of monomials of f evaluated
to 1 by a given 0-1 input vector (with multiplicities given by their
coefficients). A circuit decides if it has the same 0-1 roots as f. We
first show that some multilinear polynomials can be exponentially easier to
count than to compute them, and can be exponentially easier to decide than to
count them. Then we give general lower bounds on the size of counting circuits.Comment: 20 page
A Nearly Optimal Lower Bound on the Approximate Degree of AC
The approximate degree of a Boolean function is the least degree of a real polynomial that
approximates pointwise to error at most . We introduce a generic
method for increasing the approximate degree of a given function, while
preserving its computability by constant-depth circuits.
Specifically, we show how to transform any Boolean function with
approximate degree into a function on variables with approximate degree at least . In particular, if , then
is polynomially larger than . Moreover, if is computed by a
polynomial-size Boolean circuit of constant depth, then so is .
By recursively applying our transformation, for any constant we
exhibit an AC function of approximate degree . This
improves over the best previous lower bound of due to
Aaronson and Shi (J. ACM 2004), and nearly matches the trivial upper bound of
that holds for any function. Our lower bounds also apply to
(quasipolynomial-size) DNFs of polylogarithmic width.
We describe several applications of these results. We give:
* For any constant , an lower bound on the
quantum communication complexity of a function in AC.
* A Boolean function with approximate degree at least ,
where is the certificate complexity of . This separation is optimal
up to the term in the exponent.
* Improved secret sharing schemes with reconstruction procedures in AC.Comment: 40 pages, 1 figur
- …