Abstract
The pigeonhole principle asserts that there is no injective mapping from m pigeons to n holes as long as m > n. It is amazingly simple, expresses one of the most basic primitives in mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (counting) and, for these reasons, is probably the most extensively studied combinatorial principle. In this survey we try to summarize what is known about its proof complexity, and what we would still like to prove.We also mention some applications of the pigeonhole principle to the study of efficient provability of major open problems in computational complexity, as well as some of its generalizations in the form of general matching principles.
Supported by The von Neumann Fund
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Urquhart, A.: The complexity of propositional proofs. Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 1 (1995) 425–467
Krajíček, J.: Bounded arithmetic, propositional logic and complexity theory. Cambridge University Press (1995)
Razborov, A.: Lower bounds for propositional proofs and independence results in Bounded Arithmetic. In auf der Heide, F.M., Monien, B., eds.: Proceedings of the 23rd ICALP, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1099, NewYork/Berlin, Springer-Verlag (1996) 48–62
Beame, P., Pitassi, T.: Propositional proof complexity: Past, present and future. Technical Report TR98-067, Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (1998)
Pudlák, P.: The lengths of proofs. In Buss, S., ed.: Handbook of Proof Theory. Elsevier (1998) 547–637
Cook, S.A., Reckhow, A.R.: The relative efficiency of propositional proof systems. Journal of Symbolic Logic 44 (1979) 36–50
Reckhow, R.A.: On the lengths of proofs in the propositional calculus. Technical Report 87, University of Toronto (1976)
Maciel, A., Pitassi, T., Woods, A.: A new proof of the weak pigeonhole principle. Manuscript (1999)
Håstad, J.: Computational limitations on Small Depth Circuits. PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1986)
Clegg, M., Edmonds, J., Impagliazzo, R.: Using the Groebner basis algorithm to find proofs of unsatisfiability. In: Proceedings of the 28th ACM STOC. (1996) 174–183
Ben-Sasson, E., Wigderson, A.: Short proofs are narrow — resolution made simple. In: Proceedings of the 31st ACM STOC. (1999) 517–526
Alekhnovich, M., Ben-Sasson, E., Razborov, A., Wigderson, A.: Pseudorandom generators in propositional complexity. In: Proceedings of the 41st IEEE FOCS. (2000) 43–53
Razborov, A.: Improved resolution lower bounds for the weak pigeonhole principle. Technical Report TR01-055, Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (2001)Available at ftp://ftp.eccc.uni-trier.de/pub/eccc/reports/2001/TR01-055/index.html.
Haken, A.: The intractability or resolution. Theoretical Computer Science 39 (1985) 297–308
Buss, S.R.: Polynomial size proofs of the propositional pigeonhole principle. Journal of Symbolic Logic 52 (1987) 916–927
Cook, W., Coullard, C.R., Turán, G.: On the complexity of cutting plane proofs. Discrete Applied Mathematics 18 (1987) 25–38
Ajtai, M.: The complexity of the pigeonhole principle. In: Proceedings of the 29th IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science. (1988) 346–355
Bellantoni, S., Pitassi, T., Urquhart, A.: Approximation of small depth Frege proofs. SIAM Journal on Computing 21 (1992) 1161–1179
Pitassi, T., Beame, P., Impagliazzo, R.: Exponential lower bounds for the pigeonhole principle. Computational Complexity 3 (1993) 97–140
Krajíček, J., Pudlák, P., Woods, A.R.: Exponential lower bounds to the size of bounded depth Frege proofs of the pigeonhole principle. Random Structures and Algorithms 7 (1995) 15–39
Razborov, A.: Lower bounds for the polynomial calculus. Computational Complexity 7 (1998) 291–324
Impagliazzo, R., Pudlák, P., Sgall, J.: Lower bounds for the polynomial calculus and the Groebner basis algorithm. Computational Complexity 8 (1999) 127–144
Alekhnovich, M., Razborov, A.: Lower bounds for the polynomial calculus: non-binomial case. In: Proceedings of the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science. (2001) 190–199
Riis, S.: Independence in Bounded Arithmetic. PhD thesis, Oxford University (1993)
Paris, J.B., Wilkie, A.J., Woods, A.R.: Provability of the pigeonhole principle and the existence of infinitely many primes. Journal of Symbolic Logic 53 (1988) 1235–1244
Krajíček, J.: On the weak pigeonhole principle. Fundamenta Mathematicae 170 (2001) 123–140
Buss, S., Turán, G.: Resolution proofs of generalized pigeonhole principle. Theoretical Computer Science 62 (1988) 311–317
Atserias, A.: Improved bounds on the weak pigeonhole principle and infinitely many primes from weaker axioms. In J. Sgall, A. Pultr, P.K., ed.: Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on the Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (Marianske Lazne, August’ 01), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2136, Springer-Verlag (2001) 148–158
Atserias, A., Bonet, M.L., Esteban, J.L.: Lower bounds for the weak pigeonhole principle beyond resolution. To appear in Information and Computation (2000)
Buss, S., Pitassi, T.: Resolution and the weak pigeonhole principle. In: Proceedings of the CSL97, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1414, NewYork/Berlin, Springer-Verlag (1997) 149–156
Razborov, A., Wigderson, A., Yao, A.: Read-once branching programs, rectangular proofs of the pigeonhole principle and the transversal calculus. In: Proceedings of the 29th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing. (1997) 739–748
Pitassi, T., Raz, R.: Regular resolution lower bounds for the weak pigeonhole principle. In: Proceedings of the 33rd ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing. (2001) 347–355
Raz, R.: Resolution lower bounds for the weak pigeonhole principle. Technical Report TR01-021, Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (2001)
Razborov, A.: Resolution lower bounds for the weak functional pigeonhole principle. Manuscript, available at http://www.mi.ras.ru/~razborov/matching.ps (2001)
Razborov, A.: Resolution lower bounds for perfect matching principles. Manuscript, available at http://www.mi.ras.ru/~razborov/matching.ps (2001)
Razborov, A.: Bounded Arithmetic and lower bounds in Boolean complexity. In Clote, P., Remmel, J., eds.: Feasible Mathematics II. Progress in Computer Science and Applied Logic, vol. 13. Birkhäuser (1995) 344–386
Dantchev, S., Riis, S.: “Planar” tautologies hard for Resolution. In: Proceedings of the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science. (2001) 220–229
Alekhnovich, M.: Mutilated chessboard is exponentially hard for resolution. Manuscript (2000)
Beame, P., Riis, S.: More on the relative strength of counting principles. In Beame, P., Buss, S., eds.: Proof Complexity and Feasible Arithmetics: DIMACS workshop, April 21–24, 1996, DIMACS Series in Dicrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 39. American Math. Soc. (1997) 13–35
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Razborov, A.A. (2002). Proof Complexity of Pigeonhole Principles. In: Kuich, W., Rozenberg, G., Salomaa, A. (eds) Developments in Language Theory. DLT 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2295. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46011-X_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46011-X_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-43453-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46011-4
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive