Given a logic presented in a sequent calculus, a natural question is that of equivalence of proofs: to determine whether two given proofs are equated by any denotational semantics, ie any categorical interpretation of the logic compatible with its cut-elimination procedure. This notion can usually be captured syntactically by a set of rule permutations.
Very generally, proofnets can be defined as combinatorial objects which provide canonical representatives of equivalence classes of proofs. In particular, the existence of proof nets for a logic provides a solution to the equivalence problem of this logic. In certain fragments of linear logic, it is possible to give a notion of proofnet with good computational properties, making it a suitable representation of proofs for studying the cut-elimination procedure, among other things.
It has recently been proved that there cannot be such a notion of proofnets for the multiplicative (with units) fragment of linear logic, due to the equivalence problem for this logic being Pspace-complete.
We investigate the multiplicative-additive (without unit) fragment of linear logic and show it is closely related to binary decision trees: we build a representation of proofs based on binary decision trees, reducing proof equivalence to decision tree equivalence, and give a converse encoding of binary decision trees as proofs. We get as our main result that the complexity of the proof equivalence problem of the studied fragment is Logspace-complete.

Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1502.01993

• 03F05 - Cut-elimination and normal-form theorems
• 03F07 - Structure of proofs
• 03F52 - Proof-theoretic aspects of linear logic and other substructural logics
• 68Q15 - Complexity classes (hierarchies, relations among complexity classes, etc.)