Related papers: Superpolynomial Length Lower Bounds for Tree-Like …
We prove two results that shed new light on the monotone complexity of the spanning tree polynomial, a classic polynomial in algebraic complexity and beyond. First, we show that the spanning tree polynomials having $n$ variables and defined…
We prove that if conditions I-II (below) hold and there is a sequence of Boolean functions $f_n$ hard to approximate by p-size circuits such that p-size circuit lower bounds for $f_n$ do not have p-size proofs in Extended Frege system EF,…
This paper investigates the impact of query topology on the difficulty of answering conjunctive queries in the presence of OWL 2 QL ontologies. Our first contribution is to clarify the worst-case size of positive existential (PE),…
We present a general method for converting any family of unsatisfiable CNF formulas that is hard for one of the simplest proof systems, tree resolution, into formulas that require large rank in any proof system that manipulates polynomials…
Motivated by the fundamental lower bounds questions in proof complexity, we initiate the study of matrix identities as hard instances for strong proof systems. A matrix identity of $d \times d$ matrices over a field $\mathbb{F}$, is a…
We give the first {\sl reconstruction algorithm} for decision trees: given queries to a function $f$ that is $\mathrm{opt}$-close to a size-$s$ decision tree, our algorithm provides query access to a decision tree $T$ where: $\circ$ $T$ has…
We analyse how the standard reductions between constraint satisfaction problems affect their proof complexity. We show that, for the most studied propositional, algebraic, and semi-algebraic proof systems, the classical constructions 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 investigate the proof complexity of extended Frege (EF) systems for basic transitive modal logics (K4, S4, GL, ...) augmented with the bounded branching axioms $\mathbf{BB}_k$. First, we study feasibility of the disjunction property and…
We study the refutation complexity of graph isomorphism in the tree-like resolution calculus. Tor\'an and W\"orz (TOCL 2023) showed that there is a resolution refutation of narrow width $k$ for two graphs if and only if they can be…
We introduce a new algebraic proof system, which has tight connections to (algebraic) circuit complexity. In particular, we show that any super-polynomial lower bound on any Boolean tautology in our proof system implies that the permanent…
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…
We consider the top tree compression scheme introduced by Bille et al. [ICALP 2013] and construct an infinite family of trees on $n$ nodes labeled from an alphabet of size $\sigma$, for which the size of the top DAG is…
We show that Cutting Planes (CP) proofs are hard to find: Given an unsatisfiable formula $F$, 1) It is NP-hard to find a CP refutation of $F$ in time polynomial in the length of the shortest such refutation; and 2)unless Gap-Hitting-Set…
This article precisely defines huge proofs within the system of Natural Deduction for the Minimal implicational propositional logic \mil. This is what we call an unlimited family of super-polynomial proofs. We consider huge families of…
We prove that any extended formulation that approximates the matching polytope on $n$-vertex graphs up to a factor of $(1+\varepsilon)$ for any $\frac2n \le \varepsilon \le 1$ must have at least $\binom{n}{{\alpha}/{\varepsilon}}$ defining…
This paper considers the length of resolution proofs when using Krishnamurthy's classic symmetry rules. We show that inconsistent linear equation systems of bounded width over a fixed finite field $\mathbb{F}_p$ with $p$ a prime have, in…
Classes of polynomial differential equations of degree n are considered. An explicit upper bound on the size of the coefficients are given which implies that each equation in the class has exactly n complex periodic solutions. In most of…
In this paper, we study learning and testing decision tree of size and depth that are significantly smaller than the number of attributes $n$. Our main result addresses the problem of poly$(n,1/\epsilon)$ time algorithms with…
Proving super-polynomial size lower bounds for $\textsf{TC}^0$, the class of constant-depth, polynomial-size circuits of Majority gates, is a notorious open problem in complexity theory. A major frontier is to prove that $\textsf{NEXP}$…