Sum-of-Squares Lower Bounds for the Minimum Circuit Size Problem
(2311.12994)Abstract
We prove lower bounds for the Minimum Circuit Size Problem (MCSP) in the Sum-of-Squares (SoS) proof system. Our main result is that for every Boolean function $f: {0,1}n \rightarrow {0,1}$, SoS requires degree $\Omega(s{1-\epsilon})$ to prove that $f$ does not have circuits of size $s$ (for any $s > \mathrm{poly}(n)$). As a corollary we obtain that there are no low degree SoS proofs of the statement NP $\not \subseteq $ P/poly. We also show that for any $0 < \alpha < 1$ there are Boolean functions with circuit complexity larger than $2{n{\alpha}}$ but SoS requires size $2{2{\Omega(n{\alpha})}}$ to prove this. In addition we prove analogous results on the minimum \emph{monotone} circuit size for monotone Boolean slice functions. Our approach is quite general. Namely, we show that if a proof system $Q$ has strong enough constraint satisfaction problem lower bounds that only depend on good expansion of the constraint-variable incidence graph and, furthermore, $Q$ is expressive enough that variables can be substituted by local Boolean functions, then the MCSP problem is hard for $Q$.
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