English

Complexity of equivalence relations and preorders from computability theory

Logic 2018-02-12 v2

Abstract

We study the relative complexity of equivalence relations and preorders from computability theory and complexity theory. Given binary relations R,SR, S, a componentwise reducibility is defined by RS    \exfx,y[xRy\lraf(x)Sf(y)]. R\le S \iff \ex f \, \forall x, y \, [xRy \lra f(x) Sf(y)]. Here ff is taken from a suitable class of effective functions. For us the relations will be on natural numbers, and ff must be computable. We show that there is a Π1\Pi_1-complete equivalence relation, but no Πk\Pi k-complete for k2k \ge 2. We show that Σk\Sigma k preorders arising naturally in the above-mentioned areas are Σk\Sigma k-complete. This includes polynomial time mm-reducibility on exponential time sets, which is Σ2\Sigma 2, almost inclusion on r.e.\ sets, which is Σ3\Sigma 3, and Turing reducibility on r.e.\ sets, which is Σ4\Sigma 4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1302.0580,
  title  = {Complexity of equivalence relations and preorders from computability theory},
  author = {Egor Ianovski and Keng Meng Ng and Russell Miller and Andre Nies},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.0580},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

To appear in J. Symb. Logic

R2 v1 2026-06-21T23:20:06.001Z