  B{\'e}zout 's theorem states that dense generic systems of n multivariate
quadratic equations in n variables have 2 n solutions over algebraically closed
fields. When only a small subset M of monomials appear in the equations
(fewnomial systems), the number of solutions may decrease dramatically. We
focus in this work on subsets of quadratic monomials M such that generic
systems with support M do not admit any solution at all. For these systems,
Hilbert's Nullstellensatz ensures the existence of algebraic certificates of
inconsistency. However, up to our knowledge all known bounds on the sizes of
such certificates -including those which take into account the Newton polytopes
of the polynomials- are exponential in n. Our main results show that if the
inequality 2|M| -- 2n $\le$ $\sqrt$ 1 + 8{\nu} -- 1 holds for a quadratic
fewnomial system -- where {\nu} is the matching number of a graph associated
with M, and |M| is the cardinality of M -- then there exists generically a
certificate of inconsistency of linear size (measured as the number of
coefficients in the ground field K). Moreover this certificate can be computed
within a polynomial number of arithmetic operations. Next, we evaluate how
often this inequality holds, and we give evidence that the probability that the
inequality is satisfied depends strongly on the number of squares. More
precisely, we show that if M is picked uniformly at random among the subsets of
n + k + 1 quadratic monomials containing at least $\Omega$(n 1/2+$\epsilon$)
squares, then the probability that the inequality holds tends to 1 as n grows.
Interestingly, this phenomenon is related with the matching number of random
graphs in the Erd{\"o}s-Renyi model. Finally, we provide experimental results
showing that certificates in inconsistency can be computed for systems with
more than 10000 variables and equations.
