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Questions tagged [complexity-classes]

Questions about relationships between complexity classes.

543 questions
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What is the definition of P, NP, NP-complete and NP-hard?

I'm in a course about computing and complexity, and am unable to understand what these terms mean. All I know is that NP is a subset of NP-complete, which is a subset of NP-hard, but I have no idea what they actually mean. Wikipedia isn't much help…
Mirrana
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Why do we believe that PSPACE ≠ EXPTIME?

I'm having trouble intuitively understanding why PSPACE is generally believed to be different from EXPTIME. If PSPACE is the set of problems solvable in space polynomial in the input size $f(n)$, then how can there be a class of problems that…
user25876
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Would the P vs. NP problem become trivial as a result of the development of universal quantum computers?

If someone were to build a universal quantum computer, would that have any implications on the problem of P vs. NP?
Barte
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Generalised 3SUM (k-SUM) problem?

The 3SUM problem tries to identify 3 integers $a,b,c$ from a set $S$ of size $n$ such that $a + b + c = 0$. It is conjectured that there is not better solution than quadratic, i.e. $\mathcal{o}(n^2)$. Or to put it differently: $\mathcal{o}(n \log(n)…
bitmask
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Is the k-clique problem NP-complete?

In this Wikipedia article about the Clique problem in graph theory it states in the beginning that the problem of finding a clique of size K, in a graph G is NP-complete: Cliques have also been studied in computer science: finding whether there is…
Eivind
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2 answers

Is the open question NP=co-NP the same as P=NP?

I'm wondering this based on several places online that call $\sf NP=$ co-$\sf NP$ a major open problem... but I can't find any indication as to whether or not this is the same as $\sf P=NP$ problem...
Mirrana
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Does $\mathsf{P} \ne \mathsf{NP}$ imply that $|\mathsf{NP}| > |\mathsf{P}|$?

Is it possible that $\mathsf{P} \not = \mathsf{NP}$ and the cardinality of $\mathsf{P}$ is the same as the cardinality of $\mathsf{NP}$? Or does $\mathsf{P} \not = \mathsf{NP}$ mean that $\mathsf{P}$ and $\mathsf{NP}$ must have different…
Jason Baker
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PTAS definition vs. FPTAS

From what I read in the preliminary version of a chapter of the book “Lectures on Scheduling” edited by R.H. M¨ohring, C.N. Potts, A.S. Schulz, G.J. Woeginger, L.A. Wolsey, to appear around 2011 A.D. This is the PTAS Definition: A polynomial time…
M a m a D
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Why is NP in EXPTIME?

Is there an easy way to see why NP is in EXPTIME? It seems to me a priori conceivable that there could be a problem which requires super-exponential time to solve, but whose solution could be verified in polynomial time.
tparker
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Some questions on parallel computing and the class NC

I have a number of related questions about these two topics. First, most complexity texts only gloss over the class $\mathbb{NC}$. Is there a good resource that covers the research more in depth? For example, something that discusses all of my…
Mike Izbicki
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Types of reductions and associated definitions of hardness

Let A be reducible to B, i.e., $A \leq B$. Hence, the Turing machine accepting $A$ has access to an oracle for $B$. Let the Turing machine accepting $A$ be $M_{A}$ and the oracle for $B$ be $O_{B}$. The types of reductions: Turing reduction:…
Pavithran Iyer
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Complexity classes pertaining to listing all solutions?

I was reading a question over at Stack Overflow asking whether it was NP-hard to list all simple cycles in a graph containing a particular node and it occurred to me that I couldn't think of any existing complexity class that was well-suited for…
templatetypedef
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What is so fundamental about polynomial functions that they are used to demarcate the Hardness boundary in NP complexity classes?

This question has been bugging me ever since I first came across the concept of NP, NP-Complete, and NP-Hard a few years back: what is so fundamental about the polynomial functions that they are used to demarcate the boundary between what is "hard"…
shivams
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Are there established complexity classes with real numbers?

A student recently asked me to check an NP-hardness proof for them. They performed a reduction along the lines of: I reduce this problem $P'$ that is known to be NP-complete to my problem $P$ (with a poly-time many-one reduction), so $P$ is…
Raphael
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Are all Integer Linear Programming problems NP-Hard?

As I understand, the assignment problem is in P as the Hungarian algorithm can solve it in polynomial time - O(n3). I also understand that the assignment problem is an integer linear programming problem, but the Wikipedia page states that this is…
Matt
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