The Power of Negative Reasoning

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Semialgebraic proof systems have been studied extensively in proof complexity since the late 1990s to understand the power of Gröbner basis computations, linear and semidefinite programming hierarchies, and other methods. Such proof systems are defined alternately with only the original variables of the problem and with special formal variables for positive and negative literals, but there seems to have been no study how these different definitions affect the power of the proof systems. We show for Nullstellensatz, polynomial calculus, Sherali-Adams, and sums-of-squares that adding formal variables for negative literals makes the proof systems exponentially stronger, with respect to the number of terms in the proofs. These separations are witnessed by CNF formulas that are easy for resolution, which establishes that polynomial calculus, Sherali-Adams, and sums-of-squares cannot efficiently simulate resolution without having access to variables for negative literals.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication36th Computational Complexity Conference, CCC 2021
EditorsValentine Kabanets
Number of pages24
PublisherSchloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik
Publication date2021
Article number40
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-95977-193-1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Event36th Computational Complexity Conference, CCC 2021 - Virtual, Toronto, Canada
Duration: 20 Jul 202123 Jul 2021

Conference

Conference36th Computational Complexity Conference, CCC 2021
LandCanada
ByVirtual, Toronto
Periode20/07/202123/07/2021
SeriesLeibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, LIPIcs
Volume200
ISSN1868-8969

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© Susanna F. de Rezende, Massimo Lauria, Jakob Nordström, and Dmitry Sokolov;

    Research areas

  • Nullstellensatz, Polynomial calculus, Proof complexity, Sherali-Adams, Sums-of-squares

ID: 306898812