Related papers: Bounded-Depth Frege Lower Bounds for Random 3-CNFs…

We study the complexity of inverse cellular automata on configurations of bounded size. Deciding injectivity in this setting is co-NP-complete by a theorem of Durand. We give a simpler proof of this theorem by a direct reduction from UNSAT…

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…

We study the *refuter* problems for proof complexity lower bounds. Suppose $\varphi$ is a hard tautology that does not admit any length-$s$ proof in some proof system $P$. In the corresponding refuter problem, we are given (query access to)…

We consider the proof complexity of the minimal complete fragment, KS, of standard deep inference systems for propositional logic. To examine the size of proofs we employ atomic flows, diagrams that trace structural changes through a proof…

We study the complexity of the following "resolution width problem": Does a given 3-CNF have a resolution refutation of width k? We prove that the problem cannot be decided in time O(n^((k-3)/12)). This lower bound is unconditional and does…

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…

We show that constant-depth Frege systems with counting axioms modulo $m$ polynomially simulate Nullstellensatz refutations modulo $m$. Central to this is a new definition of reducibility from formulas to systems of polynomials with the…

We obtain upper and lower bounds for running times of exponential time algorithms for the detection of weak backdoor sets of 3CNF formulas, considering various base classes. These results include (omitting polynomial factors), (i) a 4.54^k…

Atserias and M\"uller (JACM, 2020) proved that for every unsatisfiable CNF formula $\varphi$, the formula $\operatorname{Ref}(\varphi)$, stating "$\varphi$ has small Resolution refutations", does not have subexponential-size Resolution…

In this paper, we consider lower bounds on the query complexity for testing CSPs in the bounded-degree model. First, for any ``symmetric'' predicate $P:{0,1}^{k} \to {0,1}$ except \equ where $k\geq 3$, we show that every (randomized)…

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…

Random constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs) are known to exhibit threshold phenomena: given a uniformly random instance of a CSP with $n$ variables and $m$ clauses, there is a value of $m = \Omega(n)$ beyond which the CSP will be…

Random instances of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP's) appear to be hard for all known algorithms, when the number of constraints per variable lies in a certain interval. Contributing to the general understanding of the structure of…

Hardness magnification reduces major complexity separations (such as $\mathsf{\mathsf{EXP}} \nsubseteq \mathsf{NC}^1$) to proving lower bounds for some natural problem $Q$ against weak circuit models. Several recent works [OS18, MMW19,…

The framework of algebraically natural proofs was independently introduced in the works of Forbes, Shpilka and Volk (2018), and Grochow, Kumar, Saks and Saraf (2017), to study the efficacy of commonly used techniques for proving lower…

Folklore in complexity theory suspects that circuit lower bounds against $\mathbf{NC}^1$ or $\mathbf{P}/\operatorname{poly}$, currently out of reach, are a necessary step towards proving strong proof complexity lower bounds for systems like…

We study initial cuts of models of weak two-sorted Bounded Arithmetics with respect to the strength of their theories and show that these theories are stronger than the original one. More explicitly we will see that polylogarithmic cuts of…

We exhibit a monotone function computable by a monotone circuit of quasipolynomial size such that any monotone circuit of polynomial depth requires exponential size. This is the first size-depth tradeoff result for monotone circuits in the…

We exhibit families of $4$-CNF formulas over $n$ variables that have sums-of-squares (SOS) proofs of unsatisfiability of degree (a.k.a. rank) $d$ but require SOS proofs of size $n^{\Omega(d)}$ for values of $d = d(n)$ from constant all the…

Let $P:\{0,1\}^k \to \{0,1\}$ be a nontrivial $k$-ary predicate. Consider a random instance of the constraint satisfaction problem $\mathrm{CSP}(P)$ on $n$ variables with $\Delta n$ constraints, each being $P$ applied to $k$ randomly chosen…