English

VPSPACE and a Transfer Theorem over the Reals

Computational Complexity 2009-09-29 v2

Abstract

We introduce a new class VPSPACE of families of polynomials. Roughly speaking, a family of polynomials is in VPSPACE if its coefficients can be computed in polynomial space. Our main theorem is that if (uniform, constant-free) VPSPACE families can be evaluated efficiently then the class PAR of decision problems that can be solved in parallel polynomial time over the real numbers collapses to P. As a result, one must first be able to show that there are VPSPACE families which are hard to evaluate in order to separate over the reals P from NP, or even from PAR.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cs/0610009,
  title  = {VPSPACE and a Transfer Theorem over the Reals},
  author = {Pascal Koiran and Sylvain Perifel},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cs/0610009},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Full version of the paper (appendices of the first version are now included in the text)

R2 v1 2026-07-22T12:26:52.782Z