English

Nullstellensatz Size-Degree Trade-offs from Reversible Pebbling

Computational Complexity 2020-01-09 v1

Abstract

We establish an exactly tight relation between reversible pebblings of graphs and Nullstellensatz refutations of pebbling formulas, showing that a graph GG can be reversibly pebbled in time tt and space ss if and only if there is a Nullstellensatz refutation of the pebbling formula over GG in size t+1t+1 and degree ss (independently of the field in which the Nullstellensatz refutation is made). We use this correspondence to prove a number of strong size-degree trade-offs for Nullstellensatz, which to the best of our knowledge are the first such results for this proof system.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.02481,
  title  = {Nullstellensatz Size-Degree Trade-offs from Reversible Pebbling},
  author = {Susanna F. de Rezende and Or Meir and Jakob Nordström and Robert Robere},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.02481},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:05:52.110Z