1,128 research outputs found

    Subclasses of Presburger Arithmetic and the Weak EXP Hierarchy

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    It is shown that for any fixed i>0i>0, the Σi+1\Sigma_{i+1}-fragment of Presburger arithmetic, i.e., its restriction to i+1i+1 quantifier alternations beginning with an existential quantifier, is complete for ΣiEXP\mathsf{\Sigma}^{\mathsf{EXP}}_{i}, the ii-th level of the weak EXP hierarchy, an analogue to the polynomial-time hierarchy residing between NEXP\mathsf{NEXP} and EXPSPACE\mathsf{EXPSPACE}. This result completes the computational complexity landscape for Presburger arithmetic, a line of research which dates back to the seminal work by Fischer & Rabin in 1974. Moreover, we apply some of the techniques developed in the proof of the lower bound in order to establish bounds on sets of naturals definable in the Σ1\Sigma_1-fragment of Presburger arithmetic: given a Σ1\Sigma_1-formula Φ(x)\Phi(x), it is shown that the set of non-negative solutions is an ultimately periodic set whose period is at most doubly-exponential and that this bound is tight.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

    Theories for TC0 and Other Small Complexity Classes

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    We present a general method for introducing finitely axiomatizable "minimal" two-sorted theories for various subclasses of P (problems solvable in polynomial time). The two sorts are natural numbers and finite sets of natural numbers. The latter are essentially the finite binary strings, which provide a natural domain for defining the functions and sets in small complexity classes. We concentrate on the complexity class TC^0, whose problems are defined by uniform polynomial-size families of bounded-depth Boolean circuits with majority gates. We present an elegant theory VTC^0 in which the provably-total functions are those associated with TC^0, and then prove that VTC^0 is "isomorphic" to a different-looking single-sorted theory introduced by Johannsen and Pollet. The most technical part of the isomorphism proof is defining binary number multiplication in terms a bit-counting function, and showing how to formalize the proofs of its algebraic properties.Comment: 40 pages, Logical Methods in Computer Scienc

    Logic Meets Algebra: the Case of Regular Languages

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    The study of finite automata and regular languages is a privileged meeting point of algebra and logic. Since the work of Buchi, regular languages have been classified according to their descriptive complexity, i.e. the type of logical formalism required to define them. The algebraic point of view on automata is an essential complement of this classification: by providing alternative, algebraic characterizations for the classes, it often yields the only opportunity for the design of algorithms that decide expressibility in some logical fragment. We survey the existing results relating the expressibility of regular languages in logical fragments of MSO[S] with algebraic properties of their minimal automata. In particular, we show that many of the best known results in this area share the same underlying mechanics and rely on a very strong relation between logical substitutions and block-products of pseudovarieties of monoid. We also explain the impact of these connections on circuit complexity theory.Comment: 37 page

    Presburger arithmetic, rational generating functions, and quasi-polynomials

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    Presburger arithmetic is the first-order theory of the natural numbers with addition (but no multiplication). We characterize sets that can be defined by a Presburger formula as exactly the sets whose characteristic functions can be represented by rational generating functions; a geometric characterization of such sets is also given. In addition, if p=(p_1,...,p_n) are a subset of the free variables in a Presburger formula, we can define a counting function g(p) to be the number of solutions to the formula, for a given p. We show that every counting function obtained in this way may be represented as, equivalently, either a piecewise quasi-polynomial or a rational generating function. Finally, we translate known computational complexity results into this setting and discuss open directions.Comment: revised, including significant additions explaining computational complexity results. To appear in Journal of Symbolic Logic. Extended abstract in ICALP 2013. 17 page
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