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A Complex Analogue of Toda’s Theorem

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Abstract

Toda (SIAM J. Comput. 20(5):865–877, 1991) proved in 1989 that the (discrete) polynomial time hierarchy, PH, is contained in the class P #P, namely the class of languages that can be decided by a Turing machine in polynomial time given access to an oracle with the power to compute a function in the counting complexity class #P. This result, which illustrates the power of counting, is considered to be a seminal result in computational complexity theory. An analogous result (with a compactness hypothesis) in the complexity theory over the reals (in the sense of Blum–Shub–Smale real machines (Blum et al. in Bull. Am. Math. Soc. 21(1):1–46, 1989) was proved in Basu and Zell (Found. Comput. Math. 10(4):429–454, 2010). Unlike Toda’s proof in the discrete case, which relied on sophisticated combinatorial arguments, the proof in Basu and Zell (Found. Comput. Math. 10(4):429–454, 2010) is topological in nature; the properties of the topological join are used in a fundamental way. However, the constructions used in Basu and Zell (Found. Comput. Math. 10(4):429–454, 2010) were semi-algebraic—they used real inequalities in an essential way and as such do not extend to the complex case. In this paper, we extend the techniques developed in Basu and Zell (Found. Comput. Math. 10(4):429–454, 2010) to the complex projective case. A key role is played by the complex join of quasi-projective complex varieties. As a consequence, we obtain a complex analogue of Toda’s theorem. The results of this paper, combined with those in Basu and Zell (Found. Comput. Math. 10(4):429–454, 2010), illustrate the central role of the Poincaré polynomial in algorithmic algebraic geometry, as well as in computational complexity theory over the complex and real numbers: the ability to compute it efficiently enables one to decide in polynomial time all languages in the (compact) polynomial hierarchy over the appropriate field.

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  1. Department of Mathematics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47906, USA

    Saugata Basu

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  1. Saugata Basu
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Communicated by Peter Bürgisser.

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Basu, S. A Complex Analogue of Toda’s Theorem. Found Comput Math 12, 327–362 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10208-011-9105-5

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