期刊名称:Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity
印刷版ISSN:1433-8092
出版年度:2020
卷号:2020
页码:1-13
出版社:Universität Trier, Lehrstuhl für Theoretische Computer-Forschung
摘要:We identify several genres of search problems beyond NP for which existence of solutions is guaranteed. One class that seems especially rich in such problems is PEPP (for “polynomial empty pigeonhole principle”), which includes problems related to existence theorems proved through the union bound, such as finding a bit string that is far from all codewords, finding an explicit rigid matrix, as well as a problem we call Complexity, capturing Complexity Theory’s quest. When the union bound is generous, in that solutions constitute at least a polynomial fraction of the domain, we have a family of seemingly weaker classes α-PEPP, which are inside FPNP|poly. Higher in the hierarchy, we identify the constructive version of the SauerShelah lemma and the appropriate generalization of PPP that contains it. The resulting total function hierarchy turns out to be more stable than the polynomial hierarchy: it is known that, under oracles, total functions within FNP may be easy, but total functions a level higher may still be harder than FPNP.