The concept of redundancy in SAT lead to more expressive and powerful proof search techniques, e.g. able to express various inprocessing techniques, and to interesting hierarchies of proof systems [Heule et.al’20, Buss-Thapen’19].
We propose a general way to integrate redundancy rules in MaxSAT, that is we define MaxSAT variants of ... more >>>

Vanishing sums of roots of unity can be seen as a natural generalization of knapsack from Boolean variables to variables taking values over the roots of unity. We show that these sums are hard to prove for polynomial calculus and for sum-of-squares, both in terms of degree and size.

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 way up to n^{delta} for some universal constant delta. This shows that ... more >>>

We prove that there are 3-CNF formulas over n variables that can be refuted in resolution in width w but require resolution proofs of size n^Omega(w). This shows that the simple counting argument that any formula refutable in width w must have a proof in size n^O(w) is essentially tight. ... more >>>

In 2003, Atserias and Dalmau resolved a major open question about the resolution proof system by establishing that the space complexity of CNF formulas is always an upper bound on the width needed to refute them. Their proof is beautiful but somewhat mysterious in that it relies heavily on tools ... more >>>

We say that a graph with $n$ vertices is $c$-Ramsey if it does not contain either a clique or an independent set of size $c \log n$. We define a CNF formula which expresses this property for a graph $G$. We show a superpolynomial lower bound on the length of ... more >>>

We explain an asymmetric Prover-Delayer game which precisely characterizes proof size in tree-like Resolution. This game was previously described in a parameterized complexity context to show lower bounds for parameterized formulas and for the classical pigeonhole principle. The main point of this note is to show that the asymmetric game ... more >>>

During the last decade, an active line of research in proof complexity has been to study space complexity and time-space trade-offs for proofs. Besides being a natural complexity measure of intrinsic interest, space is also an important issue in SAT solving, and so research has mostly focused on weak systems ... more >>>

Ramsey Theorem is a cornerstone of combinatorics and logic. In its
simplest formulation it says that there is a function $r$ such that
any simple graph with $r(k,s)$ vertices contains either a clique of
size $k$ or an independent set of size $s$. We study the complexity
of proving upper ... more >>>

A general framework for parameterized proof complexity was introduced by Dantchev, Martin, and Szeider (FOCS'07). In that framework the parameterized version of any proof system is not fpt-bounded for some technical reasons, but we remark that this question becomes much more interesting if we restrict ourselves to those parameterized contradictions ... more >>>

We initiate the study of the proof complexity of propositional encoding of (weak cases of) concrete independence results. In particular we study the proof complexity of Paris-Harrington's Large Ramsey Theorem. We prove a conditional lower bound in Resolution and a quasipolynomial upper bound in bounded-depth Frege.

In this note we show that the asymmetric Prover-Delayer game developed by Beyersdorff, Galesi, and Lauria (ECCC TR10-059) for Parameterized Resolution is also applicable to other tree-like proof systems. In particular, we use this asymmetric Prover-Delayer game to show a lower bound of the form $2^{\Omega(n\log n)}$ for the pigeonhole ... more >>>

Parameterized Resolution and, moreover, a general framework for parameterized proof complexity was introduced by Dantchev, Martin, and Szeider (FOCS'07). In that paper, Dantchev et al. show a complexity gap in tree-like Parameterized Resolution for propositional formulas arising from translations of first-order principles.
We broadly investigate Parameterized Resolution obtaining the following ... more >>>

We study the space required by Polynomial Calculus refutations of random $k$-CNFs. We are interested in how many monomials one needs to keep in memory to carry on a refutation. More precisely we show that for $k \geq 4$ a refutation of a random $k$-CNF of $\Delta n$ clauses and ... more >>>

We prove that Polynomial Calculus and Polynomial Calculus with Resolution are not automatizable, unless W[P]-hard problems are fixed parameter tractable by one-side error randomized algorithms. This extends to Polynomial Calculus the analogous result obtained for Resolution by Alekhnovich and Razborov (SIAM J. Computing, 38(4), 2008).

We introduce an algebraic proof system Pcrk, which combines together {\em Polynomial Calculus} (Pc) and {\em $k$-DNF Resolution} (Resk).
This is a natural generalization to Resk of the well-known {\em Polynomial Calculus with Resolution} (Pcr) system which combines together Pc and Resolution.

We study the complexity of proofs in such ... more >>>