39 research outputs found
A complex analogue of Toda's Theorem
Toda \cite{Toda} proved in 1989 that the (discrete) polynomial time
hierarchy, , is contained in the class \mathbf{P}^{#\mathbf{P}},
namely the class of languages that can be decided by a Turing machine in
polynomial time given access to an oracle with the power to compute a function
in the counting complexity class #\mathbf{P}. This result, which illustrates
the power of counting is considered to be a seminal result in computational
complexity theory. An analogous result (with a compactness hypothesis) in the
complexity theory over the reals (in the sense of Blum-Shub-Smale real machines
\cite{BSS89}) was proved in \cite{BZ09}. Unlike Toda's proof in the discrete
case, which relied on sophisticated combinatorial arguments, the proof in
\cite{BZ09} is topological in nature in which the properties of the topological
join is used in a fundamental way. However, the constructions used in
\cite{BZ09} were semi-algebraic -- they used real inequalities in an essential
way and as such do not extend to the complex case. In this paper, we extend the
techniques developed in \cite{BZ09} to the complex projective case. A key role
is played by the complex join of quasi-projective complex varieties. As a
consequence we obtain a complex analogue of Toda's theorem. The results
contained in this paper, taken together with those contained in \cite{BZ09},
illustrate the central role of the Poincar\'e polynomial in algorithmic
algebraic geometry, as well as, in computational complexity theory over the
complex and real numbers -- namely, the ability to compute it efficiently
enables one to decide in polynomial time all languages in the (compact)
polynomial hierarchy over the appropriate field.Comment: 31 pages. Final version to appear in Foundations of Computational
Mathematic