Supercritical space-width trade-offs for resolution

• We show that there are CNF formulas which can be refuted in resolution in both small space and small width, but for which any small-width proof must have space exceeding by far the linear worst-case upper bound. This significantly strengthens the space-width trade-offs in [E. Ben-Sasson, SIAM J. Comput., 38 (2009), pp. 2511-2525], and provides one more example of trade-offs in the "supercritical" regime above worst case recently identified by [A.A. Razborov, J. ACM, 63 (2016), 16]. We obtain our results by using Razborov's new hardness condensation technique and combining it with the space lower bounds in [E. Ben-Sasson and J. Nordström, Short proofs may be spacious: An optimal separation of space and length in resolution, in Proceedings of the 49th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS '08), 2008, pp. 709-718].

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Proof complexity

Resolution

Space

Supercritical

Trade-offs

Width

Commerce

Optical resolving power

Trade off

Economic and social effects

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)