On the kernel and shortest face complexes in the unit cube

Abstract

Studying the extreme kernel face complexes of a given dimension, we obtain some lower estimates of the number of shortest face complexes in the n-dimensional unit cube. The number of shortest complexes of k-dimensional faces is shown to be of the same logarithm order as the number of complexes consisting of at most 2n−1 different k-dimensional faces if 1 ≤ k ≤ c · n and c < 0.5. This implies similar lower bounds for the maximum length of the kernel DNFs and the number of the shortest DNFs of Boolean functions.