Lane A. Hemachandra

The Boolean hierarchy I: structural properties

In this paper, we study the complexity of sets formed by boolean operations (union, intersection, and complement) on NP sets. These are the sets accepted by trees of hardware with NP predicates as leaves, and together these form the boolean hierarchy.We present many results about the structure of the boolean hierarchy: separation and immunity results, natural complete languages, and structural asymmetries between complementary classes.We show that in some relativized worlds the boolean hierarchy is infinite, and that for every k there is a relativized world in which the boolean hierarchy extends exactly k levels. We prove natural languages, variations of VERTEX COVER, complete for the various levels of the boolean hierarchy. We show the following structural asymmetry: though no set in the boolean hierarchy is

Using simulated annealing to design good codes

{\text{D}}^{\text{P}}

The Boolean hierarchy II: applications

-immune, there is a relativized world in which the boolean hierarchy contains

On the power of parity polynomial time

{\text{coD}}^{\text{P}}

The Boolean Hierarchy: Hardware over NP

-immune sets.Thus, this paper explores the structural properties of the...

A complexity theory for feasible closure properties

Simulated annealing is a computational heuristic for obtaining approximate solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. It is used to construct good source codes, error-correcting codes, and spherical codes. For certain sets of parameters codes that are better than any other known in the literature are found.

How hard are sparse sets

The Boolean Hierarchy I: Structural Properties [J. Cai et al., SIAM J. Comput ., 17 (1988), pp. 1232–252] explores the structure of the boolean hierarchy, the closure of NP with respect to boolean ...

The strong exponential hierarchy collapses

This paper proves that the complexity class ⊕P, parity polynomial time [PZ], contains the class of languages accepted byNP machines with few accepting paths. Indeed, ⊕P contains a broad class of languages accepted by path-restricted nondeterministic machines. In particular, ⊕P contains the polynomial accepting path versions ofNP, of the counting hierarchy, and of ModmNP form>1. We further prove that the class of nondeterministic path-restricted languages is closed under bounded truth-table reductions.

Lower bounds for the low hierarchy

In this paper, we study the complexity of sets formed by boolean operations (∪, ∩, and complementation) on NP sets. These are the sets accepted by trees of hardware with NP predictates as leaves, and together form the boolean hierarchy. We present many results about the boolean hierarchy: separation and immunity results, complete languages, upward separations, connections to sparse oracles for NP, and structural asymmetries between complementary classes. Some results present new ideas and techniques. Others put previous results about NP and DP in a richer perspective. Throughout, we emphasize the structure of the boolean hierarchy and its relations with more common classes.

One-way functions and the nonisomorphism of NP-complete sets

The study of the complexity of sets encompasses two complementary aims: (1) establishing—usually via explicit construction of algorithms-that sets are feasible, and (2) studying the relative complexity of sets that plausibly might be feasible but are not currently known to be feasible (such as the NP-complete sets and the PSPACE-complete sets). For the study of the complexity of closure properties, a recent flurry of results has established an analog of (1); these papers explicitly demonstrate many closure properties possessed by PP and C=P (and the proofs implicitly give closure properties of the function class #P). The present paper presents and develops, for function classes such as #P, SpanP, OptP, and MidP, an analog of (2): a general theory of the complexity of closure properties. In particular, we show that subtraction is hard for the closure properties of each of these classes: each is closed under subtraction if and only if it is closed under every polynomial-time operation. Previously, no property—natural or unnatural—had been known to have this behavior. We also prove other natural operations hard for the closure properties of #P, SpanP, OptP, and MidP, and we explore the relative complexity of operations that seem not to be # P-hard, such as maximum, minimum, decrement, and median. Moreover, for each of #P, SpanP, OptP, and MidP, we give a natural complete characterization—in terms of the collapse of complexity classes—of the conditions under which that class has every feasible closure property.The study of the complexity of sets encompasses two complementary aims: (1) establishing-usually via explicit construction of algorithms-that sets are feasible, and (2) studying the relative complexity of sets that plausibly might be feasible but are not currently known to be feasible (such as the NP-complete sets and the PSPACE-complete sets). For the study of the complexity of closure properties, a recent flurry of results has established an analog of (1); these papers explicitly demonstrate many closure properties possessed by PP and C=P (and the proofs implicitly give closure properties of the function class #P). The present paper presents and develops, for function classes such as #P, SpanP, OptP, and MidP, an analog of (2): a genera1 theory of the complexity of closure properties. In particular, we show that subtraction is hard for the closure properties of each of these classes: each is closed under subtraction if and only if it is closed under every polynomial-time operation. Previously, no property-natural or unnatural-had been known to have this behavior. We also prove other natural operations hard for the closure properties of #P, SpanP, OptP, and MidP, and we explore the relative complexity of operations that seem not to be #P-hard, such as maximum, minimum, decrement, and median. Moreover, for each of #P, SpanP, OptP, and MidP, we give a natural complete characterization-in terms of the collapse of complexity classes-of the conditions under which that class has every feasible closure property.