5 research outputs found
Query Order and the Polynomial Hierarchy
Hemaspaandra, Hempel, and Wechsung [cs.CC/9909020] initiated the field of
query order, which studies the ways in which computational power is affected by
the order in which information sources are accessed. The present paper studies,
for the first time, query order as it applies to the levels of the polynomial
hierarchy. We prove that the levels of the polynomial hierarchy are
order-oblivious. Yet, we also show that these ordered query classes form new
levels in the polynomial hierarchy unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses.
We prove that all leaf language classes - and thus essentially all standard
complexity classes - inherit all order-obliviousness results that hold for P.Comment: 14 page
Self-Specifying Machines
We study the computational power of machines that specify their own
acceptance types, and show that they accept exactly the languages that
\manyonesharp-reduce to NP sets. A natural variant accepts exactly the
languages that \manyonesharp-reduce to P sets. We show that these two classes
coincide if and only if \psone = \psnnoplusbigohone, where the latter class
denotes the sets acceptable via at most one question to \sharpp followed by
at most a constant number of questions to \np.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in IJFC