Diagonalization in the spirit of Cantor's diagonal arguments is a widely used
tool in theoretical computer sciences to obtain structural results about
computational problems and complexity classes by indirect proofs. The Uniform
Diagonalization Theorem allows the construction of problems outside complexity
classes while still being reducible to a specific decision problem. This paper
provides a generalization of the Uniform Diagonalization Theorem by extending
it to promise problems and the complexity classes they form, e.g. randomized
and quantum complexity classes. The theorem requires from the underlying
computing model not only the decidability of its acceptance and rejection
behaviour but also of its promise-contradicting indifferent behaviour - a
property that we will introduce as "total decidability" of promise problems.
Implications of the Uniform Diagonalization Theorem are mainly of two kinds:
1. Existence of intermediate problems (e.g. between BQP and QMA) - also known
as Ladner's Theorem - and 2. Undecidability if a problem of a complexity class
is contained in a subclass (e.g. membership of a QMA-problem in BQP). Like the
original Uniform Diagonalization Theorem the extension applies besides BQP and
QMA to a large variety of complexity class pairs, including combinations from
deterministic, randomized and quantum classes.Comment: 15 page