Descriptive Complexity Theory
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Descriptive Complexity Theory
Descriptive complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory and of finite model theory that characterizes complexity classes by the type of logic needed to express the languages in them. For example, PH, the union of all complexity classes in the polynomial hierarchy, is precisely the class of languages expressible by statements of second-order logic. This connection between complexity and the logic of finite structures allows results to be transferred easily from one area to the other, facilitating new proof methods and providing additional evidence that the main complexity classes are somehow "natural" and not tied to the specific abstract machines used to define them. Specifically, each logical system produces a set of queries expressible in it. The queries – when restricted to finite structures – correspond to the computational problems of traditional complexity theory. The first main result of descriptive complexity was Fagin's theorem, shown by Ronald Fagin ...
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Computational Complexity Theory
In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved by a computer. A computation problem is solvable by mechanical application of mathematical steps, such as an algorithm. A problem is regarded as inherently difficult if its solution requires significant resources, whatever the algorithm used. The theory formalizes this intuition, by introducing mathematical models of computation to study these problems and quantifying their computational complexity, i.e., the amount of resources needed to solve them, such as time and storage. Other measures of complexity are also used, such as the amount of communication (used in communication complexity), the number of gates in a circuit (used in circuit complexity) and the number of processors (used in parallel computing). One of the roles of computationa ...
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L (complexity)
In computational complexity theory, L (also known as LSPACE or DLOGSPACE) is the complexity class containing decision problems that can be solved by a deterministic Turing machine using a logarithmic amount of writable memory space., Definition 8.12, p. 295., p. 177. Formally, the Turing machine has two tapes, one of which encodes the input and can only be read, whereas the other tape has logarithmic size but can be read as well as written. Logarithmic space is sufficient to hold a constant number of pointers into the input and a logarithmic number of boolean flags, and many basic logspace algorithms use the memory in this way. Complete problems and logical characterization Every non-trivial problem in L is complete under log-space reductions, so weaker reductions are required to identify meaningful notions of L-completeness, the most common being first-order reductions. A 2004 result by Omer Reingold shows that USTCON, the problem of whether there exists a path ...
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Star-free Language
A regular language is said to be star-free if it can be described by a regular expression constructed from the letters of the alphabet, the empty set symbol, all boolean operators – including complementation – and concatenation but no Kleene star.Lawson (2004) p.235 For instance, the language of words over the alphabet \ that do not have consecutive a's can be defined by (\emptyset^c aa \emptyset^c)^c, where X^c denotes the complement of a subset X of \^*. The condition is equivalent to having generalized star height zero. An example of a regular language which is not star-free is \, i.e. the language of strings consisting of an even number of "a". Marcel-Paul Schützenberger characterized star-free languages as those with aperiodic syntactic monoids.Lawson (2004) p.262 They can also be characterized logically as languages definable in FO the first-order logic over the natural numbers with the less-than relation, as the counter-free languages and as languages defin ...
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LH (complexity)
In computational complexity, the logarithmic time hierarchy (LH) is the complexity class of all computational problems solvable in a logarithmic amount of computation time on an alternating Turing machine with a bounded number of alternations. It is a particular case of a bounded alternating Turing machine hierarchy. It is equal to FO and to FO-uniform AC0. The ith level of the logarithmic time hierarchy is the set of languages recognised by alternating Turing machines in logarithmic time with random access Random access (more precisely and more generally called direct access) is the ability to access an arbitrary element of a sequence in equal time or any datum from a population of addressable elements roughly as easily and efficiently as any othe ... and i-1 alternations, beginning with an existential state. LH is the union of all levels. References Complexity classes {{Comp-sci-theory-stub ...
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AC (complexity)
In circuit complexity, AC is a complexity class hierarchy. Each class, ACi, consists of the languages recognized by Boolean circuits with depth O(\log^i n) and a polynomial number of unlimited fan-in AND and OR gates. The name "AC" was chosen by analogy to NC, with the "A" in the name standing for "alternating" and referring both to the alternation between the AND and OR gates in the circuits and to alternating Turing machines., page 27-18. The smallest AC class is AC0, consisting of constant-depth unlimited fan-in circuits. The total hierarchy of AC classes is defined as \mbox = \bigcup_ \mbox^i Relation to NC The AC classes are related to the NC classes, which are defined similarly, but with gates having only constant fanin. For each ''i'', we have :\mbox^i \subseteq \mbox^i \subseteq \mbox^. As an immediate consequence of this, we have that NC = AC. It is known that inclusion is strict for ''i'' = 0. Variations The power of the AC classes can be affected by addi ...
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Circuit Complexity
In theoretical computer science, circuit complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory in which Boolean functions are classified according to the size or depth of the Boolean circuits that compute them. A related notion is the circuit complexity of a recursive language that is decided by a uniform family of circuits C_,C_,\ldots (see below). Proving lower bounds on size of Boolean circuits computing explicit Boolean functions is a popular approach to separating complexity classes. For example, a prominent circuit class P/poly consists of Boolean functions computable by circuits of polynomial size. Proving that \mathsf\not\subseteq \mathsf would separate P and NP (see below). Complexity classes defined in terms of Boolean circuits include AC0, AC, TC0, NC1, NC, and P/poly. Size and depth A Boolean circuit with n input bits is a directed acyclic graph in which every node (usually called ''gates'' in this context) is either an input node of in-degree 0 labelle ...
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ELEMENTARY
Elementary may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Elementary'' (Cindy Morgan album), 2001 * ''Elementary'' (The End album), 2007 * ''Elementary'', a Melvin "Wah-Wah Watson" Ragin album, 1977 Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media * ''Elementary'' (TV series), a 2012 American drama television series * "Elementary, my dear Watson", a catchphrase of Sherlock Holmes Education * Elementary and Secondary Education Act, US * Elementary education, or primary education, the first years of formal, structured education * Elementary Education Act 1870, England and Wales * Elementary school, a school providing elementary or primary education Science and technology * ELEMENTARY, a class of objects in computational complexity theory * Elementary, a widget set based on the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries * Elementary abelian group, an abelian group in which every nontrivial element is of prime order * Elementary algebra * Elementary arithmetic * Elementary charge, '' ...
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HO (complexity)
Descriptive complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory and of finite model theory that characterizes complexity classes by the type of logic needed to express the languages in them. For example, PH, the union of all complexity classes in the polynomial hierarchy, is precisely the class of languages expressible by statements of second-order logic. This connection between complexity and the logic of finite structures allows results to be transferred easily from one area to the other, facilitating new proof methods and providing additional evidence that the main complexity classes are somehow "natural" and not tied to the specific abstract machines used to define them. Specifically, each logical system produces a set of queries expressible in it. The queries – when restricted to finite structures – correspond to the computational problems of traditional complexity theory. The first main result of descriptive complexity was Fagin's theorem, shown by Ronald Fagin ...
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EXPTIME
In computational complexity theory, the complexity class EXPTIME (sometimes called EXP or DEXPTIME) is the set of all decision problems that are solvable by a deterministic Turing machine in exponential time, i.e., in O(2''p''(''n'')) time, where ''p''(''n'') is a polynomial function of ''n''. EXPTIME is one intuitive class in an exponential hierarchy of complexity classes with increasingly more complex oracles or quantifier alternations. For example, the class 2-EXPTIME is defined similarly to EXPTIME but with a doubly exponential time bound. This can be generalized to higher and higher time bounds. EXPTIME can also be reformulated as the space class APSPACE, the set of all problems that can be solved by an alternating Turing machine in polynomial space. EXPTIME relates to the other basic time and space complexity classes in the following way: P ⊆ NP ⊆ PSPACE ⊆ EXPTIME ⊆ NEXPTIME ⊆ EXPSPACE. Furthemore, by the time hierarchy theorem and the space hierarchy the ...
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PSPACE
In computational complexity theory, PSPACE is the set of all decision problems that can be solved by a Turing machine using a polynomial amount of space. Formal definition If we denote by SPACE(''t''(''n'')), the set of all problems that can be solved by Turing machines using ''O''(''t''(''n'')) space for some function ''t'' of the input size ''n'', then we can define PSPACE formally asArora & Barak (2009) p.81 :\mathsf = \bigcup_ \mathsf(n^k). PSPACE is a strict superset of the set of context-sensitive languages. It turns out that allowing the Turing machine to be nondeterministic does not add any extra power. Because of Savitch's theorem,Arora & Barak (2009) p.85 NPSPACE is equivalent to PSPACE, essentially because a deterministic Turing machine can simulate a non-deterministic Turing machine without needing much more space (even though it may use much more time).Arora & Barak (2009) p.86 Also, the complements of all problems in PSPACE are also in PSPACE, meaning tha ...
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SO (complexity)
Descriptive complexity is a branch of computational complexity theory and of finite model theory that characterizes complexity classes by the type of logic needed to express the languages in them. For example, PH, the union of all complexity classes in the polynomial hierarchy, is precisely the class of languages expressible by statements of second-order logic. This connection between complexity and the logic of finite structures allows results to be transferred easily from one area to the other, facilitating new proof methods and providing additional evidence that the main complexity classes are somehow "natural" and not tied to the specific abstract machines used to define them. Specifically, each logical system produces a set of queries expressible in it. The queries – when restricted to finite structures – correspond to the computational problems of traditional complexity theory. The first main result of descriptive complexity was Fagin's theorem, shown by Ronald Fagin ...
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Co-NP
In computational complexity theory, co-NP is a complexity class. A decision problem X is a member of co-NP if and only if its complement is in the complexity class NP. The class can be defined as follows: a decision problem is in co-NP precisely if only ''no''-instances have a polynomial-length " certificate" and there is a polynomial-time algorithm that can be used to verify any purported certificate. That is, co-NP is the set of decision problems where there exists a polynomial ''p(n)'' and a polynomial-time bounded Turing machine ''M'' such that for every instance ''x'', ''x'' is a ''no''-instance if and only if: for some possible certificate ''c'' of length bounded by ''p(n)'', the Turing machine ''M'' accepts the pair (''x'', ''c''). Complementary Problems While an NP problem asks whether a given instance is a ''yes''-instance, its ''complement'' asks whether an instance is a ''no''-instance, which means the complement is in co-NP. Any ''yes''-instance for the original NP ...
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