Resource Bounded Immunity and Simplicity

Revisiting the thirty years-old notions of resource-bounded immunity and simplicity, we investigate the structural characteristics of various immunity notions: strong immunity, almost immunity, and hyperimmunity as well as their corresponding simplicity notions. We also study limited immunity and simplicity, called k-immunity and feasible k-immunity, and their simplicity notions. Finally, we propose the k-immune hypothesis as a working hypothesis that guarantees the existence of simple sets in NP.Comment: This is a complete version of the conference paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the 3rd IFIP International Conference on Theoretical Computer Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp.81-95, Toulouse, France, August 23-26, 200

Immunity and Simplicity for Exact Counting and Other Counting Classes

Ko [RAIRO 24, 1990] and Bruschi [TCS 102, 1992] showed that in some relativized world, PSPACE (in fact, ParityP) contains a set that is immune to the polynomial hierarchy (PH). In this paper, we study and settle the question of (relativized) separations with immunity for PH and the counting classes PP, C_{=}P, and ParityP in all possible pairwise combinations. Our main result is that there is an oracle A relative to which C_{=}P contains a set that is immune to BPP^{ParityP}. In particular, this C_{=}P^A set is immune to PH^{A} and ParityP^{A}. Strengthening results of Tor\'{a}n [J.ACM 38, 1991] and Green [IPL 37, 1991], we also show that, in suitable relativizations, NP contains a C_{=}P-immune set, and ParityP contains a PP^{PH}-immune set. This implies the existence of a C_{=}P^{B}-simple set for some oracle B, which extends results of Balc\'{a}zar et al. [SIAM J.Comp. 14, 1985; RAIRO 22, 1988] and provides the first example of a simple set in a class not known to be contained in PH. Our proof technique requires a circuit lower bound for ``exact counting'' that is derived from Razborov's [Mat. Zametki 41, 1987] lower bound for majority.Comment: 20 page

State space c-reductions for concurrent systems in rewriting logic

We present c-reductions, a state space reduction technique. The rough idea is to exploit some equivalence relation on states (possibly capturing system regularities) that preserves behavioral properties, and explore the induced quotient system. This is done by means of a canonizer function, which maps each state into a (non necessarily unique) canonical representative of its equivalence class. The approach exploits the expressiveness of rewriting logic and its realization in Maude to enjoy several advantages over similar approaches: exibility and simplicity in the definition of the reductions (supporting not only traditional symmetry reductions, but also name reuse and name abstraction); reasoning support for checking and proving correctness of the reductions; and automatization of the reduction infrastructure via Maude's meta-programming features. The approach has been validated over a set of representative case studies, exhibiting comparable results with respect to other tools

On the existence of complete disjoint NP-pairs

Disjoint NP-pairs are an interesting model of computation with important applications in cryptography and proof complexity. The question whether there exists a complete disjoint NP-pair was posed by Razborov in 1994 and is one of the most important problems in the field. In this paper we prove that there exists a many-one hard disjoint NP-pair which is computed with access to a very weak oracle (a tally NP-oracle). In addition, we exhibit candidates for complete NP-pairs and apply our results to a recent line of research on the construction of hard tautologies from pseudorandom generators

The Effect of Porosity on X-ray Emission Line Profiles from Hot-Star Winds

We investigate the degree to which the nearly symmetric form of X-ray emission lines seen in Chandra spectra of early-type supergiant stars could be explained by a possibly porous nature of their spatially structured stellar winds. Such porosity could effectively reduce the bound-free absorption of X-rays emitted by embedded wind shocks, and thus allow a more similar transmission of red- vs. blue-shifted emission from the back vs. front hemispheres. For a medium consisting of clumps of size l and volume filling factor f, in which the `porosity length' h=l/f increases with local radius as h = h' r, we find that a substantial reduction in wind absorption requires a quite large porosity scale factor h' > 1, implying large porosity lengths h > r. The associated wind structure must thus have either a relatively large scale l~ r, or a small volume filling factor f ~ l/r << 1, or some combination of these. The relatively small-scale, moderate compressions generated by intrinsic instabilities in line-driving seem unlikely to give such large porosity lengths, leaving again the prospect of instead having to invoke a substantial (ca. factor 5) downward revision in assumed mass-loss rates.Comment: 6 pages in apj-emulate; 3 figures; submitted to Ap

Impact of the Operations Manager's dual role on inventory policy

In modern corporations, the Operations Manager’s role in defining of firm’s strategy is becoming more important. In this paper we describe how firms can use this tendency for Operations Managers to make strategic decisions as a mechanism to prevent inventory mismanagement. These managers have incentives to speculate with inventory cost reductions, thereby avoiding sharp reductions in a single period, because it would hinder further reductions in the future. Remarkably, firms may prevent such behavior by stimulating the Operations Managers’ strategic orientation, without losing sight of inventory-efficient management

Massive 3-loop Feynman diagrams reducible to SC* primitives of algebras of the sixth root of unity

In each of the 10 cases with propagators of unit or zero mass, the finite part of the scalar 3-loop tetrahedral vacuum diagram is reduced to 4-letter words in the 7-letter alphabet of the 1-forms $\Omega:=dz/z$ and $\omega_p:=dz/ (\lambda^{-p}-z)$, where $\lambda$ is the sixth root of unity. Three diagrams yield only $\zeta(\Omega^3\omega_0)=1/90\pi^4$. In two cases $\pi^4$ combines with the Euler-Zagier sum $\zeta(\Omega^2\omega_3\omega_0)=\sum_{m> n>0}(-1)^{m+n}/m^3n$; in three cases it combines with the square of Clausen's $Cl_2(\pi/3)=\Im \zeta(\Omega\omega_1)=\sum_{n>0}\sin(\pi n/3)/n^2$. The case with 6 masses involves no further constant; with 5 masses a Deligne-Euler-Zagier sum appears: $\Re \zeta(\Omega^2\omega_3\omega_1)= \sum_{m>n>0}(-1)^m\cos(2\pi n/3)/m^3n$. The previously unidentified term in the 3-loop rho-parameter of the standard model is merely $D_3=6\zeta(3)-6 Cl_2^2(\pi/3)-{1/24}\pi^4$. The remarkable simplicity of these results stems from two shuffle algebras: one for nested sums; the other for iterated integrals. Each diagram evaluates to 10 000 digits in seconds, because the primitive words are transformable to exponentially convergent single sums, as recently shown for $\zeta(3)$ and $\zeta(5)$, familiar in QCD. Those are SC$^*(2)$ constants, whose base of super-fast computation is 2. Mass involves the novel base-3 set SC$^*(3)$. All 10 diagrams reduce to SC$^*(3)\cup$SC$^* (2)$ constants and their products. Only the 6-mass case entails both bases.Comment: 41 pages, LaTe