Johan Håstad - On Small-depth Frege Proofs for PHP

theoretics:12967 - TheoretiCS, December 1, 2025, Phase 2 - https://doi.org/10.46298/theoretics.25.27
On Small-depth Frege Proofs for PHPArticle

Authors: Johan Håstad ORCID

    We study Frege proofs for the one-to-one graph Pigeon Hole Principle defined on the $n\times n$ grid where $n$ is odd. We are interested in the case where each formula in the proof is a depth $d$ formula in the basis given by $\land$, $\lor$, and $\neg$. We prove that in this situation the proof needs to be of size exponential in $n^{Ω(1/d)}$. If we restrict the size of each line in the proof to be of size $M$ then the number of lines needed is exponential in $n/(\log M)^{O(d)}$. The main technical component of the proofs is to design a new family of random restrictions and to prove the appropriate switching lemmas.

    42 pages. This is the TheoretiCS journal version


    Volume: Phase 2
    Published on: December 1, 2025
    Accepted on: October 14, 2025
    Submitted on: January 31, 2024
    Keywords: Computational Complexity, 68Q17, F.2.2

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