Formalizing Scarf, Brouwer, and Nash in Lean
Abstract
We formalize in Lean 4 a complete combinatorial route from Scarf's theorem to Brouwer's fixed point theorem and to the existence of mixed Nash equilibria in finite games. The development follows Ivanov's indexed-order formulation of Scarf's theorem, formalizes the room--door incidence structure and parity argument, instantiates the theorem on finite grids of the standard simplex, and carries out the compactness and continuity argument needed to obtain a fixed point. We then extend the result to finite products of simplices by an explicit embedding--projection construction and use this product theorem to prove mixed Nash equilibrium existence via the Nash map. As a secondary by-product, we derive BrouwerBench, a preliminary 80-item Lean-grounded benchmark for probing proof-structure understanding within this single formal development.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.05987,
title = {Formalizing Scarf, Brouwer, and Nash in Lean},
author = {Yuwei Lyu and Kai Li},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.05987},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
18 pages, 11 tables. Accepted at the 3rd AI for Math Workshop: Toward Self-Evolving Scientific Agents