The monotone circuit complexity of Boolean functions

Recently, Razborov obtained superpolynomial lower bounds for monotone circuits that lect cliques in graphs. In particular, Razborov showed that detecting cliques of size s in a graph dh m vertices requires monotone circuits of size .Q(m-'/(log m) ~') for fixed s, and size rn ao°~') for ,. :[log ml4J. In this paper we modify the arguments of Razborov to obtain exponential lower bounds for ,motone circuits. In particular, detecting cliques of size (1/4) (m/log m) ~'/a requires monotone circuits f size exp (£2((m/log m)~/:~)). For fixed s, any inonotone circuit that detects cliques of size s requires 'm'/(log m)') AND gates. We show that even a very rough approximation of the maximum clique e of a graph requires superpolynomial size monotone circuits, and give lower bounds for some net Boolean functions. Our best lower bound fi~r an NP function of n variables is exp (f2(n w4. (log n)~/~)), improving a recent result of exp (f2(nws-')) due to Andreev.