English

Parametric Presburger Arithmetic: Complexity of Counting and Quantifier Elimination

Logic 2018-02-06 v1 Computational Complexity Combinatorics

Abstract

We consider an expansion of Presburger arithmetic which allows multiplication by kk parameters t1,,tkt_1,\ldots,t_k. A formula in this language defines a parametric set StZdS_\mathbf{t} \subseteq \mathbb{Z}^{d} as t\mathbf{t} varies in Zk\mathbb{Z}^k, and we examine the counting function St|S_\mathbf{t}| as a function of t\mathbf{t}. For a single parameter, it is known that St|S_t| can be expressed as an eventual quasi-polynomial (there is a period mm such that, for sufficiently large tt, the function is polynomial on each of the residue classes mod mm). We show that such a nice expression is impossible with 2 or more parameters. Indeed (assuming \textbf{P} \neq \textbf{NP}) we construct a parametric set St1,t2S_{t_1,t_2} such that St1,t2|S_{t_1, t_2}| is not even polynomial-time computable on input (t1,t2)(t_1,t_2). In contrast, for parametric sets StZdS_\mathbf{t} \subseteq \mathbb{Z}^d with arbitrarily many parameters, defined in a similar language without the ordering relation, we show that St|S_\mathbf{t}| is always polynomial-time computable in the size of t\mathbf{t}, and in fact can be represented using the gcd and similar functions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1802.00974,
  title  = {Parametric Presburger Arithmetic: Complexity of Counting and Quantifier Elimination},
  author = {Tristram Bogart and John Goodrick and Danny Nguyen and Kevin Woods},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.00974},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

14 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-23T00:09:40.998Z