On the relative complexity of hard problems for complexity classes without complete problems

AbstractWe show that any recursive sequence of recursive sets which is ascending with respect to the standard polynomial time reducibility notions has no minimal upper bound. As a consequence, any complexity class with certain natural closure properties possesses either complete problems or no easiest hard problems. A further corollary is that, assuming P ≠ NP, the partial ordering of the polynomial time degrees of NP-sets is not complete, and that there are no degree invariant approximations to NP-complete problems

Diagonalizations over polynomial time computable sets

AbstractA formal notion of diagonalization is developed which allows to enforce properties that are related to the class of polynomial time computable sets (the class of polynomial time computable functions respectively), like, e.g., p-immunity. It is shown that there are sets—called p-generic— which have all properties enforceable by such diagonalizations. We study the behaviour and the complexity of p-generic sets. In particular, we show that the existence of p-generic sets in NP is oracle dependent, even if we assume P ≠ NP

Genericity and measure for exponential time

AbstractRecently, Lutz [14, 15] introduced a polynomial time bounded version of Lebesgue measure. He and others (see e.g. [11, 13–18, 20]) used this concept to investigate the quantitative structure of Exponential Time (E = DTIME(2lin)). Previously, Ambos-Spies et al. [2, 3] introduced polynomial time bounded genericity concepts and used them for the investigation of structural properties of NP (under appropriate assumptions) and E. Here we relate these concepts to each other. We show that, for any c ⩾ 1, the class of nc-generic sets has p-measure 1. This allows us to simplify and extend certain p-measure 1-results. To illustrate the power of generic sets we take the Small Span Theorem of Juedes and Lutz [11] as an example and prove a generalization for bounded query reductions

Relatively computably enumerable reals

A real X is defined to be relatively c.e. if there is a real Y such that X is c.e.(Y) and Y does not compute X. A real X is relatively simple and above if there is a real Y <_T X such that X is c.e.(Y) and there is no infinite subset Z of the complement of X such that Z is c.e.(Y). We prove that every nonempty Pi^0_1 class contains a member which is not relatively c.e. and that every 1-generic real is relatively simple and above.Comment: 5 pages. Significant changes from earlier versio

Inductive inference and computable numberings

AbstractIt has been previously observed that for many TxtEx-learnable computable families of computably enumerable (c.e. for short) sets all their computable numberings are evidently 0′-equivalent, i.e. are equivalent with respect to reductions computable in the halting problem. We show that this holds for all TxtEx-learnable computable families of c.e. sets, and prove that, in general, the converse is not true. In fact there is a computable family A of c.e. sets such that all computable numberings of A are computably equivalent and A is not TxtEx-learnable. Moreover, we construct a computable family of c.e. sets which is not TxtBC-learnable though all of its computable numberings are 0′-equivalent. We also give a natural example of a computable TxtBC-learnable family of c.e. sets which possesses non-0′-equivalent computable numberings. So, for the computable families of c.e. sets, the properties of TxtBC-learnability and 0′-equivalence of all computable numberings are independent

Immunity and Pseudorandomness of Context-Free Languages

We discuss the computational complexity of context-free languages, concentrating on two well-known structural properties---immunity and pseudorandomness. An infinite language is REG-immune (resp., CFL-immune) if it contains no infinite subset that is a regular (resp., context-free) language. We prove that (i) there is a context-free REG-immune language outside REG/n and (ii) there is a REG-bi-immune language that can be computed deterministically using logarithmic space. We also show that (iii) there is a CFL-simple set, where a CFL-simple language is an infinite context-free language whose complement is CFL-immune. Similar to the REG-immunity, a REG-primeimmune language has no polynomially dense subsets that are also regular. We further prove that (iv) there is a context-free language that is REG/n-bi-primeimmune. Concerning pseudorandomness of context-free languages, we show that (v) CFL contains REG/n-pseudorandom languages. Finally, we prove that (vi) against REG/n, there exists an almost 1-1 pseudorandom generator computable in nondeterministic pushdown automata equipped with a write-only output tape and (vii) against REG, there is no almost 1-1 weakly pseudorandom generator computable deterministically in linear time by a single-tape Turing machine.Comment: A4, 23 pages, 10 pt. A complete revision of the initial version that was posted in February 200