We prove a lower bound of $\Omega(n^2/\log^2 n)$ on the size of any syntactically multilinear arithmetic circuit computing some explicit multilinear polynomial $f(x_1, \ldots, x_n)$. Our approach expands and improves upon a result of Raz, Shpilka and Yehudayoff [RSY08], who proved a lower bound of $\Omega(n^{4/3}/\log^2 n)$ for the same polynomial. Our improvement follows from an asymptotically optimal lower bound for a generalized version of Galvin's problem in extremal set theory.

The theorem on 'unbalancing set families' now works for a broad range of parameters. Earlier, it needed n = 4*prime, and set sizes to be at least log n.

We prove a lower bound of $\Omega(n^2/\log^2 n)$ on the size of any syntactically multilinear arithmetic circuit computing some explicit multilinear polynomial $f(x_1, \ldots, x_n)$. Our approach expands and improves upon a result of Raz, Shpilka and Yehudayoff [RSY08], who proved a lower bound of $\Omega(n^{4/3}/\log^2 n)$ for the same polynomial. Our improvement follows from an asymptotically optimal lower bound, in a certain range of parameters, for a generalized version of Galvin's problem in extremal set theory.

Typos in the statement of Question 1.2.

We prove a lower bound of $\Omega(n^2/\log^2 n)$ on the size of any syntactically multilinear arithmetic circuit computing some explicit multilinear polynomial $f(x_1, \ldots, x_n)$. Our approach expands and improves upon a result of Raz, Shpilka and Yehudayoff [RSY08], who proved a lower bound of $\Omega(n^{4/3}/\log^2 n)$ for the same polynomial. Our improvement follows from an asymptotically optimal lower bound, in a certain range of parameters, for a generalized version of Galvin's problem in extremal set theory.