Abstract
We give a combinatorial analysis (using edge expansion) of a variant of the iterative expander construction due to Reingold, Vadhan, and Wigderson (2002), and show that this analysis can be formalized in the bounded arithmetic system VNC^1 (corresponding to the "NC^1 reasoning"). As a corollary, we prove the assumption made by Jerabek (2011) that a construction of certain bipartite expander graphs can be formalized in VNC^1.
This in turn implies that every proof in Gentzen's sequent calculus LK of a monotone sequent can be simulated in the monotone version of LK (MLK) with only polynomial blowup in proof size, strengthening the quasipolynomial simulation result of Atserias, Galesi, and Pudlak (2002).