On minimal unsatisfiability and time-space trade-offs for k-DNF resolution

A well-known theorem by Tarsi states that a minimally unsatisfiable CNF formula with m clauses can have at most m - 1 variables, and this bound is exact. In the context of proving lower bounds on proof space in k-DNF resolution, [Ben-Sasson and Nordström 2009] extended the concept of minimal unsatisfiability to sets of k-DNF formulas and proved that a minimally unsatisfiable k-DNF set with m formulas can have at most (mk) ^{k + 1} variables. This result is far from tight, however, since they could only present explicit constructions of minimally unsatisfiable sets with Ω(mk ²) variables. In the current paper, we revisit this combinatorial problem and significantly improve the lower bound to (Ω(m)) ^k , which almost matches the upper bound above. Furthermore, using similar ideas we show that the analysis of the technique in [Ben-Sasson and Nordström 2009] for proving time-space separations and trade-offs for k-DNF resolution is almost tight. This means that although it is possible, or even plausible, that stronger results than in [Ben-Sasson and Nordström 2009] should hold, a fundamentally different approach would be needed to obtain such results.