Weighted Automata and Logics Meet Computational Complexity

Complexity classes such as $\#\mathbf{P}$, $\oplus\mathbf{P}$, $\mathbf{GapP}$, $\mathbf{OptP}$, $\mathbf{NPMV}$, or the class of fuzzy languages realised by polynomial-time fuzzy nondeterministic Turing machines, can all be described in terms of a class $\mathbf{NP}[S]$ for a suitable semiring $S$, defined via weighted Turing machines over $S$ similarly as $\mathbf{NP}$ is defined via the classical nondeterministic Turing machines. Other complexity classes of decision problems can be lifted to the quantitative world using the same recipe as well, and the resulting classes relate to the original ones in the same way as weighted automata or logics relate to their unweighted counterparts. The article surveys these too-little-known connexions between weighted automata theory and computational complexity theory implicit in the existing literature, suggests a systematic approach to the study of weighted complexity classes, and presents several new observations strengthening the relation between both fields. In particular, it is proved that a natural extension of the Boolean satisfiability problem to weighted propositional logic is complete for the class $\mathbf{NP}[S]$ when $S$ is a finitely generated semiring. Moreover, a class of semiring-valued functions $\mathbf{FP}[S]$ is introduced for each semiring $S$ as a counterpart to the class $\mathbf{P}$, and the relations between $\mathbf{FP}[S]$ and $\mathbf{NP}[S]$ are considered.