In a Merlin–Arthur proof system, the proof verifier (Arthur) accepts valid proofs (from Merlin) with probability 1, and rejects invalid proofs with probability arbitrarily close to 1. The running time of such a system is defined to be the length of Merlin’s proof plus the running time of Arthur. We provide new Merlin–Arthur proof systems for some key problems in fine-grained complexity. In several cases our proof systems have optimal running time. Our main results include: Certifying that a list of Counting the number of Computing the All-Pairs Shortest Distances matrix for an Certifying that an Certifying a Quantified Boolean Formula is true can be done in Merlin–Arthur time
Due to the centrality of these problems in fine-grained complexity, our results have consequences for many other problems of interest. For example, our work implies that certifying there is no Subset Sum solution to
Propositional Proof Skeletons
Modern SAT solvers produce proofs of unsatisfiability to justify the correctness of their results. These proofs, which are usually represented in the well-known DRAT format, can often become huge, requiring multiple gigabytes of disk storage. We present a technique for semantic proof compression that selects a subset of important clauses from a proof and stores them as a so-called proof skeleton. This proof skeleton can later be used to efficiently reconstruct a full proof by exploiting parallelism. We implemented our approach on top of the award-winning SAT solver CaDiCaL and the proof checker DRAT-trim. In an experimental evaluation, we demonstrate that we can compress proofs into skeletons that are 100 to 5,000 times smaller than the original proofs. For almost all problems, proof reconstruction using a skeleton improves the solving time on a single core, and is around five times faster when using 24 cores.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2229099
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10470830
- Editor(s):
- Sankaranarayanan, S.; Sharygina, N.
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems 2023
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract n integers has no 3-SUM solution can be done in Merlin–Arthur time$$\tilde{O}(n)$$ $$\tilde{O}(n^{1.5})$$ $$\tilde{O}(n^{1.5})$$ $$\tilde{O}(n^{1.5})$$ k -cliques with total edge weight equal to zero in ann -node graph can be done in Merlin–Arthur time$${\tilde{O}}(n^{\lceil k/2\rceil })$$ $$k\ge 3$$ k , this bound can be further improved for sparse graphs: for example, counting the number of zero-weight triangles in anm -edge graph can be done in Merlin–Arthur time$${\tilde{O}}(m)$$ k -cliques in unweighted graphs, and had worse running times for smallk .n -node graph can be done in Merlin–Arthur time$$\tilde{O}(n^2)$$ $$\Omega (n^2)$$ $$\tilde{O}(n^{2.94})$$ n -variablek -CNF is unsatisfiable can be done in Merlin–Arthur time$$2^{n/2 - n/O(k)}$$ $$2^{n/2}\cdot \textrm{poly}(n)$$ $$\#$$ k -UNSAT running in$$2^{n/2}/n^{\omega (1)}$$ $$2^{4n/5}\cdot \textrm{poly}(n)$$ $$2^{2n/3}\cdot \textrm{poly}(n)$$ n integers can be done in Merlin–Arthur time$$2^{n/3}\cdot \textrm{poly}(n)$$ $$2^{0.49991n}\cdot \textrm{poly}(n)$$ -
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