Short Proofs Are Hard to Find

Abstract

We obtain a streamlined proof of an important result by Alekhnovich and Razborov [Michael Alekhnovich and Alexander A. Razborov, 2008], showing that it is hard to automatize both tree-like and general Resolution. Under a different assumption than [Michael Alekhnovich and Alexander A. Razborov, 2008], our simplified proof gives improved bounds: we show under ETH that these proof systems are not automatizable in time n^f(n), whenever f(n) = o(log^{1/7 - epsilon} log n) for any epsilon > 0. Previously non-automatizability was only known for f(n) = O(1). Our proof also extends fairly straightforwardly to prove similar hardness results for PCR and Res(r)

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