a framework for space complexity in algebraic proof systems algebraic proof systems such as polynomial calculus pc and polynomial calculus with resolution pcr refute contradictions using polynomials space complexity for such systems measures the number of distinct monomials to be kept in memory while verifying a proof we introduce a new combinatorial framework for proving space lower bounds in algebraic proof systems as an immediate application we obtain the space lower bounds previously provided for pc pcr alekhnovich et al 2002 filmus et al 2012 more importantly using our approach in its full potential we prove n space lower bounds in pc pcr for random k cnfs k 4 in n variables thus solving an open problem posed in alekhnovich et al 2002 and filmus et al 2012 our method also applies to the graph pigeonhole principle which is a variant of the pigeonhole principle defined over a constant left degree expander graph

a general model and thresholds for random constraint satisfaction problems in this paper we study the relation among the parameters in their most general setting that define a large class of random csp models d k csp where d is the domain size and k is the length of the constraint scopes the model d k csp unifies several related models such as the model rb and the model k csp we prove that the model d k csp exhibits exact phase transitions if klnd increases no slower than the logarithm of the number of variables a series of experimental studies with interesting observations are carried out to illustrate the solubility phase transition and the hardness of instances around phase transitions

finding a tree structure in a resolution proof is np complete the resolution tree problem consists of deciding whether a given sequence like resolution refutation admits a tree structure this paper shows the np completeness of both the resolution tree problem and a natural generalization of the resolution tree problem that does not involve resolution

expander graphs and their applications a major consideration we had in writing this survey was to make it accessible to mathematicians as well as to computer scientists since expander graphs the protagonists of our story come up in numerous and often surprising contexts in both fields but perhaps we should start with a few words about graphs in general they are of course one of the prime objects of study in discrete mathematics however graphs are among the most ubiquitous models of both natural and human made structures in the natural and social sciences they model relations among species societies companies etc in computer science they represent networks of communication data organization computational devices as well as the flow of computation and more in mathematics cayley graphs are useful in group theory graphs carry a natural metric and are therefore useful in geometry and though they are just one dimensional complexes they are useful in certain parts of topology e g knot theory in statistical physics graphs can represent local connections between interacting parts of a system as well as the dynamics of a physical process on such systems the study of these models calls then for the comprehension of the significant structural properties of the relevant graphs but are there nontrivial structural properties which are universally important expansion of a graph requires that it is simultaneously sparse and highly connected expander graphs were first defined by bassalygo and pinsker and their existence first proved by pinsker in the early 70s the property of being an expander seems significant in many of these mathematical computational and physical contexts it is not surprising that expanders are useful in the design and analysis of communication networks what is less obvious is that expanders have surprising utility in other computational settings such as in the theory of error correcting codes and the theory of pseudorandomness in mathematics we will encounter e g their role in the study of metric embeddings and in particular in work around the baum connes conjecture expansion is closely related to the convergence rates of markov chains and so they play a key role in the study of monte carlo algorithms in statistical mechanics and in a host of practical computational applications the list of such interesting and fruitful connections goes on and on with so many applications we will not even

many hard examples for resolution for every choice of positive integers c and k such that k 3 and c 2 k 0 7 there is a positive number e such that with probability tending to 1 as n tends to a randomly chosen family of cn clauses of size k over n variables is unsatisfiable but every resolution proof of its unsatisfiability must generate at least 1 e n clauses

on sufficient conditions for unsatisfiability of random formulas a descriptive complexity approach to random 3 sat is initiated we show that unsatisfiability of any significant fraction of random 3 cnf formulas cannot be certified by any property that is expressible in datalog combined with the known relationship between the complexity of constraint satisfaction problems and expressibility in datalog our result implies that any constraint propagation algorithm working with small constraints will fail to certify unsatisfiability almost always our result is a consequence of designing a winning strategy for one of the players in the existential pebble game the winning strategy makes use of certain extension axioms that we introduce and hold almost surely on a random 3 cnf formula the second contribution of our work is the connection between finite model theory and propositional proof complexity to make this connection explicit we establish a tight relationship between the number of pebbles needed to win the game and the width of the resolution refutations as a consequence to our result and the known size width relationship in resolution we obtain new proofs of the exponential lower bounds for resolution refutations of random 3 cnf formulas and the pigeonhole principle

numerical analysis of stochastic schemes in geophysics we present and study the stability convergence and order of convergence of a numerical scheme used in geophysics namely the stochastic version of a deterministic implicit leapfrog scheme which has been developed for the approximation of the so called barotropic vorticity model two other schemes which might be useful in the context of geophysical applications are also introduced and discussed

time space trade offs in resolution superpolynomial lower bounds for superlinear space we give the first time space trade off lower bounds for resolution proofs that apply to superlinear space in particular we show that there are formulas of size n that have resolution refutations of size and space t n n theta log n and like all formulas have another resolution refutation of space n but for which no resolution refutation can simultaneously have space s n t n o 1 and size t n o 1 in other words any substantial reduction in space results in a super polynomial increase in total size we also show somewhat stronger time space trade off lower bounds for regular resolution which are also the first to apply to superlinear space for any function t that is at most weakly exponential t n 2 o n 1 4 we give a tautology that has regular resolution proofs of size and space t n but no such proofs with space s n t n 1 omega 1 and size t n o 1 thus any polynomial reduction in space has a superpolynomial cost in size these tautologies

resolution for max sat max sat is the problem of finding an assignment minimizing the number of unsatisfied clauses in a cnf formula we propose a resolution like calculus for max sat and prove its soundness and completeness we also prove the completeness of some refinements of this calculus from the completeness proof we derive an exact algorithm for max sat and a time upper bound we also define a weighted max sat resolution like rule and show how to adapt the soundness and completeness proofs of the max sat rule to the weighted max sat rule finally we give several particular max sat problems that require an exponential number of steps of our max sat rule to obtain the minimal number of unsatisfied clauses of the combinatorial principle these results are based on the corresponding resolution lower bounds for those particular problems

resolution proofs of generalized pigeonhole principles we extend results of haken to give an exponential lower bound on the size of resolution proofs for propositional formulas encoding a generalized pigeonhole principle these propositional formulas express the fact that there is no one one mapping from c n objects to n objects when c 1 as a corollary resolution proof systems do not p simulate constant formula depth frege proof systems

a switching lemma for small restrictions and lower bounds for k dnf resolution we prove a new switching lemma that works for restrictions that set only a small fraction of the variables and is applicable to formulas in disjunctive normal form dnfs with small terms we use this to prove lower bounds for the res k propositional proof system an extension of resolution which works with k dnfs instead of clauses we also obtain an exponential separation between depth d circuits of bottom fan in k and depth d circuits of bottom fan in k 1 our results for res k are as follows the 2n to n weak pigeonhole principle requires exponential size to refute in res k for k leq sqrt log n log log n for each constant k there exists a constant w k so that random w cnfs require exponential size to refute in res k for each constant k there are sets of clauses which have polynomial size res k 1 refutations but which require exponential size res k refutations

frege systems for quantified boolean logic we define and investigate frege systems for quantified boolean formulas qbf for these new proof systems we develop a lower bound technique that directly lifts circuit lower bounds for a circuit class c to the qbf frege system operating with lines from c such a direct transfer from circuit to proof complexity lower bounds has often been postulated for propositional systems but had not been formally established in such generality for any proof systems prior to this work this leads to strong lower bounds for restricted versions of qbf frege in particular an exponential lower bound for qbf frege systems operating with ac0 p circuits in contrast any non trivial lower bound for propositional ac0 p frege constitutes a major open problem improving these lower bounds to unrestricted qbf frege tightly corresponds to the major problems in circuit complexity and propositional proof complexity in particular proving a lower bound for qbf frege systems operating with arbitrary p poly circuits is equivalent to either showing a lower bound for p poly or for propositional extended frege which operates with p poly circuits we also compare our new qbf frege systems to standard sequent calculi for qbf and establish a correspondence to intuitionistic bounded arithmetic

mean payoff games and propositional proofs we associate a cnf formula to every instance of the mean payoff game problem in such a way that if the value of the game is non negative the formula is satisfiable and if the value of the game is negative the formula has a polynomial size refutation in s 2 frege i e dnf resolution this reduces mean payoff games to the weak automatizability of s 2 frege and to the interpolation problem for s 2 2 frege since the interpolation problem for s 1 frege i e resolution is solvable in polynomial time our result is close to optimal up to the computational complexity of solving mean payoff games the proof of the main result requires building low depth formulas that compute the bits of the sum of a constant number of integers in binary notation and low complexity proofs of the required arithmetic properties

another look at degree lower bounds for polynomial calculus abstract polynomial complexity is an algebraic proof system inspired by grobner bases which was introduced by clegg edmonds and impagliazzo alekhnovich and razborov devised a method for proving degree lower bounds for polynomial calculus we present an alternative account of their method which also encompasses a generalization due to galesi and lauria

the intractability of resolution abstract we prove that for infinitely many disjunctive normal form propositional calculus tautologies the length of the shortest resolution proof of cannot be bounded by any polynomial of the length of the tautologies we use were introduced by cook and reckhow 1979 and encode the pigeonhole principle extended resolution can furnish polynomial length proofs of these formulas

three dimensional eigenfunction analysis of a crack in a piezoelectric material abstract a three dimensional analysis of a semi infinite crack embedded in a transversely isotropic piezoelectric material was performed by means of the eigenfunction expansions method the results show the characteristic 1 r singular behavior of the stress tensor in the vicinity of the crack a similar behavior is also revealed for the electric field in addition the study demonstrates that coupling or decoupling of the mechanical and electrical variables is a function of the distance to the crack tip as well as of the crack orientation

hard examples for resolution exponential lower bounds are proved for the length of resolution refutations of sets of disjunctions constructed from expander graphs using the method of tseitin since these sets of clauses encode biconditionals they have short polynomial length refutations in a standard axiomatic formulation of propositional calculus

on the relative complexity of resolution refinements and cutting planes proof systems an exponential lower bound for the size of tree like cutting planes refutations of a certain family of conjunctive normal form cnf formulas with polynomial size resolution refutations is proved this implies an exponential separation between the tree like versions and the dag like versions of resolution and cutting planes in both cases only superpolynomial separations were known a urquhart bull symbolic logic 1 1995 pp 425 467 j johannsen inform process lett 67 1998 pp 37 41 p clote and a setzer in proof complexity and feasible arithmetics amer math soc providence ri 1998 pp 93 117 in order to prove these separations the lower bounds on the depth of monotone circuits of raz and mckenzie in combinatorica 19 1999 pp 403 435 are extended to monotone real circuits an exponential separation is also proved between tree like resolution and several refinements of resolution negative resolution and regular resolution actually this last separation also provides a separation between tree like resolution and ordered resolution and thus the corresponding superpolynomial separation of a urquhart bull symbolic logic 1 1995 pp 425 467 is extended finally an exponential separation between ordered resolution and unrestricted resolution also negative resolution is proved only a superpolynomial separation between ordered and unrestricted resolution was previously known a goerdt ann math artificial intelligence 6 1992 pp 169 184

on the complexity of resolution with bounded conjunctions we analyze size and space complexity of res k a family of propositional proof systems introduced by krajicek in fund math 170 1 3 2001 123 which extend resolution by allowing disjunctions of conjunctions of up to k 1 literals we show that the treelike res k proof systems form a strict hierarchy with respect to proof size and also with respect to space moreover resolution while simulating treelike res k is almost exponentially separated from treelike res k to study space complexity for general res k we introduce the concept of dynamical satisfiability which allows us to prove in a unified way all known space lower bounds for resolution and to extend them to res k

short proofs are narrow resolution made simple the width of a resolution proof is defined to be the maximal number of literals in any clause of the proof in this paper we relate proof width to proof length size in both general resolution and its tree like variant the following consequences of these relations reveal width as a crucial resource of resolution proofs in one direction the relations allow us to give simple unified proofs for almost all known exponential lower bounds on size of resolution proofs as well as several interesting new ones they all follow from width lower bounds and we show how these follow from natural expansion property of clauses of the input tautology in the other direction the width size relations naturally suggest a simple dynamic programming procedure for automated theorem proving one which simply searches for small width proofs this relation guarantees that the runnuing time and thus the size of the produced proof is at most quasi polynomial in the smallest tree like proof this algorithm is never much worse than any of the recursive automated provers such as dll used in practice in contrast we present a family of tautologies on which it is exponentially faster