The proof system
Res (PC
d,R
) is a natural extension of the Resolution proof system that instead of disjunctions of literals operates with disjunctions of degree
d
multivariate polynomials over a ring
R
with Boolean variables. Proving super-polynomial lower bounds for the size of
Res
(
PC
1,
R
)-refutations of Conjunctive normal forms (CNFs) is one of the important problems in propositional proof complexity. The existence of such lower bounds is even open for
Res
(
PC
1,𝔽
) when 𝔽 is a finite field, such as 𝔽
2
. In this article, we investigate
Res
(
PC
d,R
) and tree-like
Res
(
PC
d,R
) and prove size-width relations for them when
R
is a finite ring. As an application, we prove new lower bounds and reprove some known lower bounds for every finite field 𝔽 as follows:
(1)
We prove almost quadratic lower bounds for
Res
(
PC
d
,𝔽)-refutations for every fixed
d
. The new lower bounds are for the following CNFs:
(a)
Mod
q
Tseitin formulas (
char
(𝔽)≠
q
) and Flow formulas,
(b)
Random
k
-CNFs with linearly many clauses.
(2)
We also prove super-polynomial (more than
n
k
for any fixed
k
) and also exponential (2
nϵ
for an ϵ > 0) lower bounds for tree-like
Res
(
PC
d
,𝔽
)-refutations based on how big
d
is with respect to
n
for the following CNFs:
(a)
Mod
q
Tseitin formulas (
char
(𝔽)≠
q
) and Flow formulas,
(b)
Random
k
-CNFs of suitable densities,
(c)
Pigeonhole principle and Counting mod
q
principle.
The lower bounds for the dag-like systems are the first nontrivial lower bounds for these systems, including the case
d
=1. The lower bounds for the tree-like systems were known for the case
d
=1 (except for the Counting mod
q
principle, in which lower bounds for the case
d
> 1 were known too). Our lower bounds extend those results to the case where
d
> 1 and also give new proofs for the case
d
=1.