LIPIcs.CCC.2021.21.pdf
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A major proof complexity problem is to prove a superpolynomial lower bound on the length of Frege proofs of arbitrary depth. A more general question is to prove an Extended Frege lower bound. Surprisingly, proving such bounds turns out to be much easier in the algebraic setting. In this paper, we study a proof system that can simulate Extended Frege: an extension of the Polynomial Calculus proof system where we can take a square root and introduce new variables that are equivalent to arbitrary depth algebraic circuits. We prove that an instance of the subset-sum principle, the binary value principle 1 + x₁ + 2 x₂ + … + 2^{n-1} x_n = 0 (BVP_n), requires refutations of exponential bit size over ℚ in this system. Part and Tzameret [Fedor Part and Iddo Tzameret, 2020] proved an exponential lower bound on the size of Res-Lin (Resolution over linear equations [Ran Raz and Iddo Tzameret, 2008]) refutations of BVP_n. We show that our system p-simulates Res-Lin and thus we get an alternative exponential lower bound for the size of Res-Lin refutations of BVP_n.
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