An Higher-Order Characterization of Probabilistic Polynomial Time

Ugo Dal Lago (1) , Paolo Parisen Toldin (2, 1)

1 DISI - Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione [Bologna]
2 FOCUS - Foundations of Component-based Ubiquitous Systems

We present RSLR, an implicit higher-order characterization of the class PP of those problems which can be decided in probabilistic polynomial time with error probability smaller than one half. Analogously, a (less implicit) characterization of the class BPP can be obtained. RSLR is an extension of Hofmann's SLR with a probabilistic primitive, which enjoys basic properties such as subject reduction and confluence. Polynomial time soundness of RSLR is obtained by syntactical means, as opposed to the standard literature on SLR-derived systems, which use semantics in an essential way.

Domaines: Informatique

Ugo Dal Lago, Paolo Parisen Toldin. An Higher-Order Characterization of Probabilistic Polynomial Time. Information and Computation, 2013. ⟨hal-01231752v1⟩