On the Proof Complexity of Paris-Harrington and Off-Diagonal Ramsey Tautologies

Abstract

We study the proof complexity of Paris-Harrington’s Large Ramsey Theorem for bi-colorings of graphs and of off-diagonal Ramsey’s Theorem. For Paris-Harrington, we prove a non-trivial conditional lower bound in Resolution and a non-trivial upper bound in bounded-depth Frege. The lower bound is conditional on a (very reasonable) hardness assumption for a weak (quasi-polynomial) Pigeonhole principle in R es (2). We show that under such an assumption, there is no refutation of the Paris-Harrington formulas of size quasi-polynomial in the number of propositional variables. The proof technique for the lower bound extends the idea of using a combinatorial principle to blow up a counterexample for another combinatorial principle beyond the threshold of inconsistency. A strong link with the proof complexity of an unbalanced off-diagonal Ramsey principle is established. This is obtained by adapting some constructions due to Erdős and Mills. We prove a non-trivial Resolution lower bound for a family of such off-diagonal Ramsey principles.