Monotonous oracle machines

Polynomial-time oracle machines being restricted to perform a certain search technique in the oracle are considered. These search techniques (e.g. binary search, prefix search) are expressed as monotony properties of the queries computed by the oracle machine. The power of different kinds of restricted machines is systematically investigated. It turns out that restrictions are comparable in different ways if the class of oracles is restricted to NP resp. to sparse sets, or if restricted machines being additionally positive (cf. [Sel82]) are considered. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: RR 1843(95-02) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Monotonous Oracle Machines

Polynomial-time oracle machines being restricted to perform a certain search technique in the oracle are considered. These search techniques (e.g. binary search, prefix search) are expressed as monotony properties of the queries computed by the oracle machine. The power of different kinds of restricted machines is systematically investigated. It turns out that restrictions are comparable in different ways if the class of oracles is restricted to NP resp. to sparse sets, or if restricted machines being additionally positive (cf. [Sel82]) are considered. 1 Introduction The notion of a polynomial-time oracle machine is a basic tool in complexity theory. Different types of machines having restricted access to the oracle are well-studied (see e.g. [LLS75, Wag90]). For example, non-adaptive oracle machines generate their queries independent from the oracle; bounded oracle machines may ask not more than a certain number of queries; conjunctive oracle machines accept exactly when all queries ..