How QBF Expansion Makes Strategy Extraction Hard

Leroy Chew, Judith Clymo

Abstract: In this paper we show that the QBF proof checking format QRAT (Quantified Resolution Asymmetric Tautologies) by Heule, Biere and Seidl cannot have polynomial time strategy extraction unless P=PSPACE. In our proof, the crucial property that makes strategy extraction PSPACE-hard for this proof format is universal expansion, even expansion on a single variable.