This paper is dedicated to the memory of Ronald V. Book, 1937-1997.

We prove lower bounds of the form exp (n ffl d ) ; ffl d ? 0; on the length of proofs of an explicit sequence of tautologies, based on the Pigeonhole Principle, in proof systems using formulas of depth d; for any constant d: This is the largest lower bound for the strongest proof system, for which any superpolynomial lower bounds are known.

Abstract. Cook and Reckhow defined a propositional formulation of the pigeonhole principle. This paper shows that there are Frege proofs of this propositional pigeonhole principle of polynomial size. This together with a result of Haken gives another proof of Urquhart's theorem that Frege systems have an exponential speedup over resolution. We also discuss connections to provability in theories of bounded arithmetic. $1. Introduction. The motivation for this paper comes primarily from two sources. First, Cook and Reckhow [2] and Statman [7] discussed connections between lengths of proofs in propositional logic and open questions in com-putational complexity such as whether NP = co-NP. Cook and Reckhow used the propositional pigeonhole principle as an example of a family of true formulae which

The representation of functions as low-degree polynomials over various rings has provided many insights in the theory of small-depth circuits. We survey some of the closure properties, upper bounds, and lower bounds obtained via this approach. 1. Introduction There is a long history of using polynomials in order to prove complexity bounds. Minsky and Papert [39] used polynomials to prove early lower bounds on the order of perceptrons. Razborov [46] and Smolensky [49] used them to prove lower bounds on the size of AND-OR circuits. Other lower bounds via polynomials are due to [50, 4, 10, 51, 9, 55]. Paturi and Saks [44] discovered that rational functions could be used for lower bounds on the size of threshold circuits. Toda [53] used polynomials to prove upper bounds on the power of the polynomial hierarchy. This led to a series of upper bounds on the power of the polynomial hierarchy [54, 52], AC 0 [2, 3, 52, 19], and ACC [58, 20, 30, 37], and related classes [21, 42]. Beigel and Gi...

To appear in Izvestiya of the RAN Abstract We show that if strong pseudorandom generators exist then the statement "ff encodes a circuit of size n(log * n) for SATISFIABILITY " is not refutable in S22 (ff). For refutation in S12 (ff), this is proven under the weaker assumption of the existence of generators secure against the attack by small depth circuits, and for another system which is strong enough to prove exponential lower bounds for constant-depth circuits, this is shown without using any unproven hardness assumptions. These results can be also viewed as direct corollaries of interpolation-like theorems for certain "split versions " of classical systems of Bounded Arithmetic introduced in this paper.

1 LK is a natural modification of Gentzen sequent calculus for propositional logic with connectives : and V ; W (both of unbounded arity). Then for every d 0 and n 2, there is a set T d n of depth d sequents of total size O(n 3+d ) which are refutable in LK by depth d + 1 proof of size exp(O(log 2 n)) but such that every depth d refutation must have the size at least exp(n\Omega\Gamma21 ). The sets T d n express a weaker form of the pigeonhole principle. It is a fundamental problem of mathematical logic and complexity theory whether there exists a proof system for propositional logic in which every tautology has a short proof, where the length (equivalently the size) of a proof is measured essentially by the total number of symbols in it and short means polynomial in the length of the tautology. Equivalently one can ask whether for every theory T there is another theory S (both first order and reasonably axiomatized, e.g. by schemes) having the property that if a statement...

Abstract. Optimal Q(logn/log logn) lower bounds on the time for CRCW PRAMS with polynomially bounded numbers of processors or memory cells to compute parity and a number of related problems are proven. A strict time hierarchy of explicit Boolean functions of n bits on such machines that holds up to O(logn/loglogn) time is also exhibited. That is, for every time bound T within this range a function is exhibited that can be easily computed using polynomial resources in time T but requires more than polynomial resources to be computed in time T- 1. Finally, it is shown that almost all Boolean functions of n bits require logn- loglogn + fi ( 1) time when the number of processors is at most polynomial in n. The bounds do not place restrictions on the uniformity of the algorithms nor on the instruction sets of the machines.

We study the question of provability of lower bounds on the complexity of explicitly given Boolean functions in weak fragments of Peano Arithmetic. To that end, we analyze what is the right fragment capturing the kind of techniques existing in Boolean complexity at present. We give both formal and informal arguments supporting the claim that a conceivable answer is V 1 (which, in view of RSUV -isomorphism, is equivalent to S 2 ), although some major results about the complexity of Boolean functions can be proved in (presumably) weaker subsystems like U 1 . As a by-product of this analysis, we give a more constructive version of the proof of Hastad Switching Lemma which probably is interesting in its own right.

Approximating the inference probability Pr[X = xjE = e] in any sense, even for a single evidence node E, is NP-hard. This result holds for belief networks that are allowed to contain extreme conditional probabilities---that is, conditional probabilities arbitrarily close to 0. Nevertheless, all previous approximation algorithms have failed to approximate efficiently many inferences, even for belief networks without extreme conditional probabilities. We prove that we can approximate efficiently probabilistic inference in belief networks without extreme conditional probabilities. We construct a randomized approximation algorithm---the bounded-variance algorithm---that is a variant of the known likelihood-weighting algorithm. The bounded-variance algorithm is the first algorithm with provably fast inference approximation on all belief networks without extreme conditional probabilities. From the bounded-variance algorithm, we construct a deterministic approximation algorithm u...

help us decide where and how to put our efforts into solving We show that MAEXP, the exponential time version of problems in complexity theory. It is still true that virtually the Merlin-Arthur class, does not have polynomial size cir- all of the theorems in computational complexity theory that cuits. This significantly improves the previous known result have reasonable relativizations do relativize (see [For94]). due to Kannan since we furthermore show that our result But we do have a small number of exceptions that arise does not relativize. This is the first separation result in com- from the area of interactive proofs. These results have preplexity theory that does not relativize. As a corollary to our viously always taken the form of collapses such as IP= separation result we also obtain that PEXP, the exponen- PSPACE [LFKN92, Sha92], MIP=NEXP [BFL91] and tial time version of PP is not in P=poly. PCP(O(1);O(logn))=NP [ALM+92]. In this paper we give the first reasonable nonrel-1