Related papers: Resolution Lower Bounds for Refutation Statements
We introduce linear programs encoding regular expressions of finite languages. We show that, given a language, the optimum value of the associated linear program is a lower bound on the size of any regular expression of the language.…
In this paper, we analyze 2CNF formulas from the perspectives of Read-Once resolution (ROR) refutation schemes. We focus on two types of ROR refutations, viz., variable-once refutation and clause-once refutation. In the former, each…
Haken proved that every resolution refutation of the pigeonhole formula has at least exponential size. Groote and Zantema proved that a particular OBDD computation of the pigeonhole formula has an exponential size. Here we show that any…
Decomposable Negation Normal Forms (DNNFs) are Boolean circuits in negation normal form where the subcircuits leading into each AND gate are defined on disjoint sets of variables. We prove a strongly exponential lower bound on the size of…
Two major considerations when encoding pseudo-Boolean (PB) constraints into SAT are the size of the encoding and its propagation strength, that is, the guarantee that it has a good behaviour under unit propagation. Several encodings with…
We provide a number of simplified and improved separations between pairs of Resolution-with-bounded-conjunction refutation systems, Res(d), as well as their tree-like versions, Res*(d). The contradictions we use are natural combinatorial…
We prove superpolynomial length lower bounds for the semantic tree-like Frege refutation system with bounded line size. Concretely, for any function $n^{2-\varepsilon} \leq s(n) \leq 2^{n^{1-\varepsilon}}$ we exhibit an explicit family…
Many satisfiability modulo theories solvers implement a variant of the DPLL(T ) framework which separates theory-specific reasoning from reasoning on the propositional abstraction of the formula. Such solvers conclude that a formula is…
In this note we show that any $k$-CNF which can be refuted by a quasi-polynomial $\mathsf{Res}^*(\mathsf{polylog})$ refutation has a "narrow" refutation in $\mathsf{Res}$ (i.e., of poly-logarithmic width). We also show the converse…
Recent results established exponential lower bounds for the length of any Resolution proof for the weak pigeonhole principle. More formally, it was proved that any Resolution proof for the weak pigeonhole principle, with $n$ holes and any…
We show that the problem of finding a Resolution refutation that is at most polynomially longer than a shortest one is NP-hard. In the parlance of proof complexity, Resolution is not automatizable unless P = NP. Indeed, we show it is…
Strong algebraic proof systems such as IPS (Ideal Proof System; Grochow-Pitassi [GP18]) offer a general model for deriving polynomials in an ideal and refuting unsatisfiable propositional formulas, subsuming most standard propositional…
We call a CNF formula linear if any two clauses have at most one variable in common. We show that there exist unsatisfiable linear k-CNF formulas with at most 4k^2 4^k clauses, and on the other hand, any linear k-CNF formula with at most…
Proving proof-size lower bounds for $\mathbf{LK}$, the sequent calculus for classical propositional logic, remains a major open problem in proof complexity. We shed new light on this challenge by isolating the power of structural rules,…
Unit resolution can simplify a CNF formula or detect an inconsistency by repeatedly assign the variables occurring in unit clauses. Given any CNF formula sigma, we show that there exists a satisfiable CNF formula psi with size polynomially…
This is a brief technical note to clarify the state of lower bounds on regret for reinforcement learning. In particular, this paper: - Reproduces a lower bound on regret for reinforcement learning, similar to the result of Theorem 5 in the…
As a natural extension of the SAT problem, an array of proof systems for quantified Boolean formulas (QBF) have been proposed, many of which extend a propositional proof system to handle universal quantification. By formalising the…
Since the introduction of the Ideal Proof System (IPS) by Grochow and Pitassi (J. ACM 2018), a substantial body of work has established size lower bounds for IPS and its fragments. In particular, Forbes, Shpilka, Tzameret, and Wigderson…
Decision \textsc{dnnf} (a.k.a. $\wedge_d$-\textsc{fbdd}) is an important special case of Decomposable Negation Normal Form (\textsc{dnnf}), a landmark knowledge compilation model. Like other known \textsc{dnnf} restrictions, Decision…
A major open problem in proof complexity is to demonstrate that random 3-CNFs with a linear number of clauses require super-polynomial size refutations in bounded-depth Frege systems. We take the first step towards addressing this question…