skip to main content
10.1145/3406325.3451080acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesstocConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article
Public Access

Automating algebraic proof systems is NP-hard

Published:15 June 2021Publication History

ABSTRACT

We show that algebraic proofs are hard to find: Given an unsatisfiable CNF formula F, it is NP-hard to find a refutation of F in the Nullstellensatz, Polynomial Calculus, or Sherali–Adams proof systems in time polynomial in the size of the shortest such refutation. Our work extends, and gives a simplified proof of, the recent breakthrough of Atserias and Müller (JACM 2020) that established an analogous result for Resolution.

References

  1. Michael Alekhnovich, Eli Ben-Sasson, Alexander Razborov, and Avi Wigderson. 2002. Space Complexity in Propositional Calculus. SIAM J. Comput., 31, 4, 2002. Pages 1184–1211. https://doi.org/10.1137/S0097539700366735 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  2. Michael Alekhnovich, Sam Buss, Shlomo Moran, and Toniann Pitassi. 2001. Minimum propositional proof length is NP-hard to linearly approximate. Journal of Symbolic Logic, 66, 1, 2001. Pages 171–191. https://doi.org/10.2307/2694916 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  3. Michael Alekhnovich and Alexander Razborov. 2008. Resolution Is Not Automatizable Unless W[P] Is Tractable. SIAM J. Comput., 38, 4, 2008. Pages 1347–1363. https://doi.org/10.1137/06066850X Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. Albert Atserias and Maria Luisa Bonet. 2004. On the automatizability of resolution and related propositional proof systems. Information and Computation, 189, 2, 2004. Pages 182–201. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ic.2003.10.004 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  5. Albert Atserias and Víctor Dalmau. 2008. A combinatorial characterization of resolution width. J. Comput. System Sci., 74, 3, 2008. Pages 323–334. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcss.2007.06.025 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  6. Albert Atserias and Tuomas Hakoniemi. 2019. Size-Degree Trade-Offs for Sums-of-Squares and Positivstellensatz Proofs. In Proceedings of the 34th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC). 137, Pages 24:1–24:20. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2019.24 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  7. Albert Atserias and Moritz Müller. 2020. Automating Resolution is NP-Hard. J. ACM, 67, 5, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1145/3409472 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  8. Boaz Barak, Jonathan Kelner, and David Steurer. 2015. Dictionary Learning and Tensor Decomposition via the Sum-of-Squares Method. In Proceedings of the 47th Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). Pages 143–151. https://doi.org/10.1145/2746539.2746605 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  9. Roberto J. Bayardo Jr. and Robert Schrag. 1997. Using CSP Look-Back Techniques to Solve Real-World SAT Instances. In Proceedings of the 14th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Pages 203–208.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  10. Paul Beame, Stephen Cook, Jeff Edmonds, Russell Impagliazzo, and Toniann Pitassi. 1998. The Relative Complexity of NP Search Problems. J. Comput. System Sci., 57, 1, 1998. Pages 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1006/jcss.1998.1575 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  11. Paul Beame, Russell Impagliazzo, Jan Krajíček, Toniann Pitassi, and Pavel Pudlák. 1994. Lower bounds on Hilbert's Nullstellensatz and propositional proofs. In Proceedings of the 35th Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS). Pages 794–806. https://doi.org/10.1109/SFCS.1994.365714 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  12. Paul Beame, Henry Kautz, and Ashish Sabharwal. 2004. Towards Understanding and Harnessing the Potential of Clause Learning. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 22, 2004. Pages 319–351. https://doi.org/10.1613/jair.1410 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  13. Zoë Bell. 2020. Automating Regular or Ordered Resolution is NP-Hard. https://eccc.weizmann.ac.il/report/2020/105/Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. Eli Ben-Sasson and Avi Wigderson. 2001. Short Proofs Are Narrow–-Resolution Made Simple. J. ACM, 48, 2, 2001. Pages 149–169. issn:0004-5411 https://doi.org/10.1145/375827.375835 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  15. Christoph Berkholz. 2018. The Relation between Polynomial Calculus, Sherali-Adams, and Sum-of-Squares Proofs. In Proceedings of the 35th Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS). 96, Pages 11:1–11:14. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2018.11 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  16. Maria Luisa Bonet, Carlos Domingo, Ricard Gavald\`a, Alexis Maciel, and Toniann Pitassi. 2004. Non-Automatizability of Bounded-Depth Frege Proofs. Computational Complexity, 13, 1-2, 2004. Pages 47–68. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00037-004-0183-5 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  17. Maria Luisa Bonet and Nicola Galesi. 2001. Optimality of size-width tradeoffs for resolution. Computational Complexity, 10, 4, 2001. Pages 261–276. https://doi.org/10.1007/s000370100000 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  18. Maria Luisa Bonet, Toniann Pitassi, and Ran Raz. 1997. No Feasible Interpolation for TC^0-Frege Proofs. In Proceedings of the 38th Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS). Pages 254–263. https://doi.org/10.1109/SFCS.1997.646114 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  19. Mar\'ia Luisa Bonet, Toniann Pitassi, and Ran Raz. 2000. On Interpolation and Automatization for Frege Systems. SIAM J. Comput., 29, 6, 2000. Pages 1939–1967. https://doi.org/10.1137/S0097539798353230 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  20. Joshua Buresh-Oppenheim, Matthew Clegg, Russell Impagliazzo, and Toniann Pitassi. 2002. Homogenization and the Polynomial Calculus. Computational Complexity, 11, 3-4, 2002. Pages 91–108. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00037-002-0171-6 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. Sam Buss, Dima Grigoriev, Russell Impagliazzo, and Toniann Pitassi. 2001. Linear Gaps between Degrees for the Polynomial Calculus Modulo Distinct Primes. J. Comput. System Sci., 62, 2, 2001. Pages 267–289. https://doi.org/0.1006/jcss.2000.1726Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  22. Matthew Clegg, Jeff Edmonds, and Russell Impagliazzo. 1996. Using the Groebner Basis Algorithm to Find Proofs of Unsatisfiability. In Proceedings of the 28th Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). Pages 174–183. https://doi.org/10.1145/237814.237860 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  23. Stefan Dantchev and Sø ren Riis. 2003. On Relativisation and Complexity Gap for Resolution-Based Proof Systems. In Computer Science Logic. Springer. Pages 142–154. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45220-1_14 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  24. Susanna F. de Rezende, Or Meir, Jakob Nordström, Toniann Pitassi, Robert Robere, and Marc Vinyals. 2020. Lifting with Simple Gadgets and Applications to Circuit and Proof Complexity. In Proceedings of the 61st Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS). Pages 24–30. https://doi.org/10.1109/focs46700.2020.00011 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  25. Susanna F. de Rezende, Jakob Nordström, and Marc Vinyals. 2016. How Limited Interaction Hinders Real Communication (and What It Means for Proof and Circuit Complexity). In Proceedings of the 57th Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS). Pages 295–304. https://doi.org/10.1109/FOCS.2016.40 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  26. Noah Fleming, Pravesh Kothari, and Toniann Pitassi. 2019. Semialgebraic Proofs and Efficient Algorithm Design. Foundations and Trends in Theoretical Computer Science, 14, 1-2, 2019. Pages 1–221. https://doi.org/10.1561/0400000086 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  27. Nicola Galesi and Massimo Lauria. 2010. On the Automatizability of Polynomial Calculus. Theory of Computing Systems, 47, 2, 2010. Pages 491–506. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00224-009-9195-5 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  28. Nicola Galesi and Massimo Lauria. 2010. Optimality of Size-Degree Tradeoffs for Polynomial Calculus. ACM Transactions on Computational Logic, 12, 1, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1145/1838552.1838556 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  29. Ankit Garg, Mika Göös, Pritish Kamath, and Dmitry Sokolov. 2018. Monotone Circuit Lower Bounds from Resolution. In Proceedings of the 50th Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). Pages 902–911. https://doi.org/10.1145/3188745.3188838 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  30. Michal Garlík. 2019. Resolution Lower Bounds for Refutation Statements. In Proceedings of the 44th Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS). 138, Pages 37:1–37:13. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2019.37 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  31. Michal Garlík. 2020. Failure of Feasible Disjunction Property for k-DNF Resolution and NP-hardness of Automating It. https://eccc.weizmann.ac.il/report/2020/037/Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  32. Konstantinos Georgiou and Avner Magen. 2008. Limitations of the Sherali-Adams lift and project system: Compromising local and global arguments. http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/pub/reports/csrg/587/CSRG-587.pdfGoogle ScholarGoogle Scholar
  33. Mika Göös, Pritish Kamath, Robert Robere, and Dmitry Sokolov. 2019. Adventures in Monotone Complexity and TFNP. In Proceedings of the 10th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS). Pages 38:1–38:19. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2019.38 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  34. Mika Göös, Sajin Koroth, Ian Mertz, and Toniann Pitassi. 2020. Automating Cutting Planes is NP-Hard. In Proceedings of the 52nd Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). Pages 68–77. https://doi.org/10.1145/3357713.3384248 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  35. Mika Göös and Toniann Pitassi. 2018. Communication Lower Bounds via Critical Block Sensitivity. SIAM J. Comput., 47, 5, 2018. Pages 1778–1806. https://doi.org/10.1137/16M1082007 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  36. Samuel Hopkins, Pravesh Kothari, Aaron Potechin, Prasad Raghavendra, Tselil Schramm, and David Steurer. 2017. The Power of Sum-of-Squares for Detecting Hidden Structures. In Proceedings of the 58th Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS). Pages 720–731. https://doi.org/10.1109/FOCS.2017.72 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  37. Trinh Huynh and Jakob Nordström. 2012. On the Virtue of Succinct Proofs: Amplifying Communication Complexity Hardness to Time–Space Trade-Offs in Proof Complexity. In Proceedings of the 44th Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). Pages 233–248. isbn:978-1-4503-1245-5 https://doi.org/10.1145/2213977.2214000 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  38. Russell Impagliazzo, Pavel Pudlák, and Ji\v r\'i Sgall. 1999. Lower Bounds for the Polynomial Calculus and the Gröbner Basis Algorithm. Computational Complexity, 8, 2, 1999. Pages 127–144. https://doi.org/10.1007/s000370050024 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  39. Kazuo Iwama. 1997. Complexity of finding short resolution proofs. In Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS). Pages 309–318. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0029974 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  40. Emil Je\v rábek. 2007. On Independence of Variants of the Weak Pigeonhole Principle. Journal of Logic and Computation, 17, 3, 2007. Pages 587–604. https://doi.org/10.1093/logcom/exm017 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  41. Stasys Jukna. 2012. Boolean Function Complexity: Advances and Frontiers. Algorithms and Combinatorics. 27, Springer.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  42. Pravesh Kothari, Jacob Steinhardt, and David Steurer. 2018. Robust moment estimation and improved clustering via sum of squares. In Proceedings of the 50th Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC). Pages 1035–1046. https://doi.org/10.1145/3188745.3188970 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  43. Jan Krajíček and Pavel Pudlák. 1998. Some Consequences of Cryptographical Conjectures for S^1_2 and EF. Information and Computation, 140, 1, 1998. Pages 82–94. https://doi.org/10.1006/inco.1997.2674 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  44. Jean Lasserre. 2001. An Explicit Exact SDP Relaxation for Nonlinear 0–1 Programs. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Integer Programming and Combinatorial Optimization (IPCO). Pages 293–303. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45535-3_23 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  45. Massimo Lauria and Jakob Nordström. 2017. Graph Colouring is Hard for Algorithms Based on Hilbert's Nullstellensatz and Gröbner Bases. In Proceedings of the 32nd Computational Complexity Conference (CCC). Pages 2:1–2:20. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2017.2 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  46. Massimo Lauria and Jakob Nordström. 2017. Tight Size-Degree Bounds for Sums-of-Squares Proofs. Computational Complexity, 26, 4, 2017. Pages 911–948. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00037-017-0152-4 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  47. Tengyu Ma, Jonathan Shi, and David Steurer. 2016. Polynomial-Time Tensor Decompositions with Sum-of-Squares. In Proceedings of the 57th Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS). Pages 438–446. https://doi.org/10.1109/FOCS.2016.54 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  48. Jo\~ao P. Marques-Silva and Karem A. Sakallah. 1999. GRASP: A Search Algorithm for Propositional Satisfiability. IEEE Trans. Comput., 48, 5, May, 1999. Pages 506–521. https://doi.org/10.1109/12.769433 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  49. Ian Mertz, Toniann Pitassi, and Yuanhao Wei. 2019. Short Proofs Are Hard to Find. In Proceedings of the 46th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP). 132, Pages 84:1–84:16. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2019.84 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  50. Matthew W. Moskewicz, Conor F. Madigan, Ying Zhao, Lintao Zhang, and Sharad Malik. 2001. Chaff: Engineering an Efficient SAT Solver. In Proceedings of the 38th Design Automation Conference (DAC). Pages 530–535. https://doi.org/10.1145/378239.379017 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  51. Ryan O'Donnell. 2017. SOS Is Not Obviously Automatizable, Even Approximately. In Proceedings of the 8th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS). 67, Schloss Dagstuhl. Pages 59:1–59:10. isbn:978-3-95977-029-3 https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2017.59 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  52. Ryan O'Donnell and Tselil Schramm. 2019. Sherali–Adams Strikes Back. In Proceedings of the 34th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC). Pages 8:1–8:30. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2019.8 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  53. Ryan O'Donnell and Yuan Zhou. 2013. Approximability and proof complexity. In Proceedings of the 24th Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA). Pages 1537–1556. https://doi.org/10.1137/1.9781611973105.111 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  54. Christos Papadimitriou. 1994. On the Complexity of the Parity Argument and Other Inefficient Proofs of Existence. J. Comput. System Sci., 48, 3, 1994. Pages 498–532. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-0000(05)80063-7 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  55. Pablo Parrilo. 2000. Structured Semidefinite Programs and Semialgebraic Geometry Methods in Robustness and Optimization.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  56. Toniann Pitassi and Nathan Segerlind. 2012. Exponential Lower Bounds and Integrality Gaps for Tree-Like Lovász–Schrijver Procedures. SIAM J. Comput., 41, 1, 2012. Pages 128–159. https://doi.org/10.1137/100816833 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  57. Aaron Potechin. 2020. Sum of Squares Bounds for the Ordering Principle. In Proceedings of the 35th Computational Complexity Conference (CCC). 169, Pages 38:1–38:37. issn:1868-8969 https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.CCC.2020.38 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  58. Pavel Pudlák. 2000. Proofs as Games. The American Mathematical Monthly, 107, 6, 2000. Pages 541–550. issn:00029890, 19300972 https://doi.org/10.2307/2589349 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  59. Pavel Pudlák. 2003. On reducibility and symmetry of disjoint NP pairs. Theoretical Computer Science, 295, 2003. Pages 323–339. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3975(02)00411-5 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  60. Pavel Pudlák and Neil Thapen. 2019. Random resolution refutations. Computational Complexity, 28, 2, 2019. Pages 185–239. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00037-019-00182-7 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  61. Prasad Raghavendra and Benjamin Weitz. 2017. On the Bit Complexity of Sum-of-Squares Proofs. In Proceedings of the 44th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP). Pages 80:1–80:13. https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ICALP.2017.80 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  62. Alexander Razborov. 1998. Lower bounds for the polynomial calculus. Computational Complexity, 7, 1998. Pages 291–324. https://doi.org/10.1007/s000370050013 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  63. Hanif Sherali and Warren Adams. 1994. A hierarchy of relaxations and convex hull characterizations for mixed-integer zero–one programming problems. Discrete Applied Mathematics, 52, 1, 1994. Pages 83–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/0166-218X(92)00190-W Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  64. Naum Shor. 1987. An Approach to Obtaining Global Extremums in Polynomial Mathematical Programming Problems. Cybernetics, 23, 5, 1987. Pages 695–700. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01074929 Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref

Index Terms

  1. Automating algebraic proof systems is NP-hard

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Login options

    Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

    Sign in
    • Published in

      cover image ACM Conferences
      STOC 2021: Proceedings of the 53rd Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing
      June 2021
      1797 pages
      ISBN:9781450380539
      DOI:10.1145/3406325

      Copyright © 2021 ACM

      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 15 June 2021

      Permissions

      Request permissions about this article.

      Request Permissions

      Check for updates

      Qualifiers

      • research-article

      Acceptance Rates

      Overall Acceptance Rate1,469of4,586submissions,32%

      Upcoming Conference

      STOC '24
      56th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2024)
      June 24 - 28, 2024
      Vancouver , BC , Canada

    PDF Format

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader