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Intersection Classes in TFNP and Proof Complexity

Authors Yuhao Li, William Pires, Robert Robere

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Author Details

Yuhao Li
  • Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
William Pires
  • Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Robert Robere
  • McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Funding

  • Li, Yuhao: Supported by NSF grants IIS-1838154, CCF-2106429 and CCF-2107187.
  • Pires, William: Supported by NSF grants AF-2212136, IIS-1838154, CCF-2106429 and CCF-2107187.
  • Robere, Robert: Supported by NSERC.

Acknowledgements

Part of this work was done while the authors were visiting the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley.

Cite AsGet BibTex

Yuhao Li, William Pires, and Robert Robere. Intersection Classes in TFNP and Proof Complexity. In 15th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 287, pp. 74:1-74:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2024.74

Abstract

A recent breakthrough in the theory of total NP search problems (TFNP) by Fearnley, Goldberg, Hollender, and Savani has shown that CLS = PLS ∩ PPAD, or, in other words, the class of problems reducible to gradient descent are exactly those problems in the intersection of the complexity classes PLS and PPAD. Since this result, two more intersection theorems have been discovered in this theory: EOPL = PLS ∩ PPAD and SOPL = PLS ∩ PPADS. It is natural to wonder if this exhausts the list of intersection classes in TFNP, or, if other intersections exist. In this work, we completely classify all intersection classes involved among the classical TFNP classes PLS, PPAD, and PPA, giving new complete problems for the newly-introduced intersections. Following the close links between the theory of TFNP and propositional proof complexity, we develop new proof systems - each of which is a generalization of the classical Resolution proof system - that characterize all of the classes, in the sense that a query total search problem is in the intersection class if and only if a tautology associated with the search problem has a short proof in the proof system. We complement these new characterizations with black-box separations between all of the newly introduced classes and prior classes, thus giving strong evidence that no further collapse occurs. Finally, we characterize arbitrary intersections and joins of the PPA_q classes for q ≥ 2 in terms of the Nullstellensatz proof systems.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Complexity classes
  • Theory of computation → Proof complexity
  • Theory of computation → Complexity theory and logic
Keywords
  • TFNP
  • Proof Complexity
  • Intersection Classes

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