NP-intermediate

{{Short description|Complexity class of problems}}

{{Use American English|date=January 2019}}

In computational complexity, problems that are in the complexity class NP but are neither in the class P nor NP-complete are called NP-intermediate, and the class of such problems is called NPI. Ladner's theorem, shown in 1975 by Richard E. Ladner,{{cite journal

| first=Richard

| last=Ladner

| title=On the Structure of Polynomial Time Reducibility

| journal=Journal of the ACM

| volume=22

| issue=1

| year=1975

| pages=155–171

| doi=10.1145/321864.321877| s2cid=14352974

| doi-access=free

}} is a result asserting that, if P ≠ NP, then NPI is not empty; that is, NP contains problems that are neither in P nor NP-complete. Since it is also true that if NPI problems exist, then P ≠ NP, it follows that P = NP if and only if NPI is empty.

Under the assumption that P ≠ NP, Ladner explicitly constructs a problem in NPI, although this problem is artificial and otherwise uninteresting. It is an open question whether any "natural" problem has the same property: Schaefer's dichotomy theorem provides conditions under which classes of constrained Boolean satisfiability problems cannot be in NPI.{{cite book | last1=Grädel | first1=Erich | last2=Kolaitis | first2=Phokion G. | last3=Libkin | first3=Leonid | first4=Maarten | last4=Marx | last5=Spencer | first5=Joel | author5-link=Joel Spencer | last6=Vardi | first6=Moshe Y. | author6-link=Moshe Y. Vardi | last7=Venema | first7=Yde | last8=Weinstein | first8=Scott | title=Finite model theory and its applications | zbl=1133.03001 | series=Texts in Theoretical Computer Science. An EATCS Series | location=Berlin | publisher=Springer-Verlag | isbn=978-3-540-00428-8 | year=2007 | page=348 }}{{cite book | contribution-url=http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/lieber/courses/csg260/f06/materials/papers/max-sat/p216-schaefer.pdf | author=Schaefer, Thomas J. | author-link=Thomas Jerome Schaefer | contribution=The complexity of satisfiability problems | title=Proc. 10th Ann. ACM Symp. on Theory of Computing | pages=216–226 | year=1978 |mr= 521057}} Some problems that are considered good candidates for being NP-intermediate are the graph isomorphism problem, and decision versions of factoring and the discrete logarithm.

Under the exponential time hypothesis, there exist natural problems that require quasi-polynomial time, and can be solved in that time, including finding a large disjoint set of unit disks from a given set of disks in the hyperbolic plane,{{cite conference

| last = Kisfaludi-Bak | first = Sándor

| editor-last = Chawla | editor-first = Shuchi | editor-link = Shuchi Chawla

| contribution = Hyperbolic intersection graphs and (quasi)-polynomial time

| doi = 10.1137/1.9781611975994.100

| pages = 1621–1638

| title = Proceedings of the 31st Annual ACM–SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2020, Salt Lake City, UT, USA, January 5–8, 2020

| title-link = Symposium on Discrete Algorithms

| year = 2020| arxiv = 1812.03960

| isbn = 978-1-61197-599-4

}} and finding a graph with few vertices that is not an induced subgraph of a given graph.{{cite journal

| last1 = Eppstein | first1 = David | author1-link = David Eppstein

| last2 = Lincoln | first2 = Andrea

| last3 = Williams | first3 = Virginia Vassilevska | author3-link = Virginia Vassilevska Williams

| doi = 10.7155/jgaa.00625

| issue = 5

| journal = Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications

| pages = 329–339

| title = Quasipolynomiality of the smallest missing induced subgraph

| volume = 27

| year = 2023| doi-access = free

| arxiv = 2306.11185

}} The exponential time hypothesis also implies that no quasi-polynomial-time problem can be NP-complete, so under this assumption these problems must be NP-intermediate.

List of problems that might be NP-intermediate

=Algebra and number theory=

  • A decision version of factoring integers: for input n and k, does n have a factor in the interval [2,k]?
  • Decision versions of the discrete logarithm problem and others related to cryptographic assumptions
  • Linear divisibility: given integers x and y, does y have a divisor congruent to 1 modulo x?{{cite conference

| last1 = Adleman | first1 = Leonard

| last2 = Manders | first2 = Kenneth

| contribution = Reducibility, randomness, and {{not a typo|intractibility}}

| doi = 10.1145/800105.803405

| title = Proceedings of the 9th ACM Symp. on Theory of Computing (STOC '77)

| year = 1977}}{{cite book|title=Computational Complexity|first=Christos H.|last=Papadimitriou|publisher=Addison-Wesley|year=1994|isbn= 9780201530827|page=236}}

=Boolean logic=

| last1 = Eiter | first1 = Thomas

| last2 = Gottlob | first2 = Georg

| editor1-last = Flesca | editor1-first = Sergio

| editor2-last = Greco | editor2-first = Sergio

| editor3-last = Leone | editor3-first = Nicola

| editor4-last = Ianni | editor4-first = Giovambattista

| contribution = Hypergraph transversal computation and related problems in logic and AI

| doi = 10.1007/3-540-45757-7_53

| pages = 549–564

| publisher = Springer

| series = Lecture Notes in Computer Science

| title = Logics in Artificial Intelligence, European Conference, JELIA 2002, Cosenza, Italy, September, 23-26, Proceedings

| volume = 2424

| year = 2002}}

  • Minimum circuit size problem: given the truth table of a Boolean function and positive integer s, does there exist a circuit of size at most s for this function?{{cite conference

| first1 =Valentine

| last1 =Kabanets

| first2 =Jin-Yi

| last2 =Cai

| contribution = Circuit minimization problem

| title = Proc. 32nd Symposium on Theory of Computing

| id = {{ECCC|1999|99|045}}

| year =2000

| pages =73–79

| place = Portland, Oregon, USA

| doi = 10.1145/335305.335314| title-link =Symposium on Theory of Computing

| s2cid =785205

| doi-access =free

}}

  • Monotone dualization: given CNF and DNF formulas for monotone Boolean functions, do they represent the same function?
  • Monotone self-duality: given a CNF formula for a Boolean function, is the function invariant under a transformation that negates all of its variables and then negates the output value?{{cite journal

| last1 = Eiter | first1 = Thomas

| last2 = Makino | first2 = Kazuhisa

| last3 = Gottlob | first3 = Georg

| doi = 10.1016/j.dam.2007.04.017 | doi-access=free

| issue = 11

| journal = Discrete Applied Mathematics

| mr = 2437000

| pages = 2035–2049

| title = Computational aspects of monotone dualization: a brief survey

| volume = 156

| year = 2008| s2cid = 10096898

}}

=Computational geometry and computational topology=

| last1 = Sleator | first1 = Daniel D.

| last2 = Tarjan | first2 = Robert E.

| last3 = Thurston | first3 = William P.

| doi = 10.2307/1990951 | doi-access=free

| issue = 3

| journal = Journal of the American Mathematical Society

| mr = 928904

| pages = 647–681

| title = Rotation distance, triangulations, and hyperbolic geometry

| volume = 1

| year = 1988| jstor = 1990951

}} between two binary trees or the flip distance between two triangulations of the same convex polygon is below a given threshold

  • The turnpike problem of reconstructing points on line from their distance multiset{{cite conference

| last1 = Skiena | first1 = Steven

| last2 = Smith | first2 = Warren D.

| last3 = Lemke | first3 = Paul

| editor-last = Seidel | editor-first = Raimund

| contribution = Reconstructing Sets from Interpoint Distances (Extended Abstract)

| doi = 10.1145/98524.98598

| pages = 332–339

| publisher = ACM

| title = Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry, Berkeley, CA, USA, June 6-8, 1990

| year = 1990| doi-access = free

}}

| last1 = Jansen | first1 = Klaus

| last2 = Solis-Oba | first2 = Roberto

| doi = 10.1287/moor.1110.0515

| issue = 4

| journal = Mathematics of Operations Research

| mr = 2855867

| pages = 743–753

| title = A polynomial time OPT + 1 algorithm for the cutting stock problem with a constant number of object lengths

| volume = 36

| year = 2011}}

| last = Lackenby | first = Marc

| arxiv = 1604.00290

| doi = 10.1016/j.aim.2021.107796 | doi-access=free

| journal = Advances in Mathematics

| mr = 4274879

| page = Paper No. 107796

| title = The efficient certification of knottedness and Thurston norm

| volume = 387

| year = 2021| s2cid = 119307517

}}

| last1 = Demaine | first1 = Erik D. | author1-link = Erik Demaine

| last2 = O'Rourke | first2 = Joseph | author2-link = Joseph O'Rourke (professor)

| contribution = 24 Geodesics: Lyusternik–Schnirelmann

| doi = 10.1017/CBO9780511735172

| isbn = 978-0-521-71522-5

| location = Cambridge

| mr = 2354878

| pages = 372–375

| publisher = Cambridge University Press

| title = Geometric folding algorithms: Linkages, origami, polyhedra

| title-link=Geometric Folding Algorithms

| year = 2007}}.

=Game theory=

  • Determining the winner in parity games, in which graph vertices are labeled by which player chooses the next step, and the winner is determined by the parity of the highest-priority vertex reached{{cite journal

| last = Jurdziński | first = Marcin

| doi = 10.1016/S0020-0190(98)00150-1

| issue = 3

| journal = Information Processing Letters

| mr = 1657581

| pages = 119–124

| title = Deciding the winner in parity games is in UP \cap co-UP

| volume = 68

| year = 1998}}

  • Determining the winner for stochastic graph games, in which graph vertices are labeled by which player chooses the next step, or whether it is chosen randomly, and the winner is determined by reaching a designated sink vertex.{{cite journal

| last = Condon | first = Anne

| doi = 10.1016/0890-5401(92)90048-K

| issue = 2

| journal = Information and Computation

| mr = 1147987

| pages = 203–224

| title = The complexity of stochastic games

| volume = 96

| year = 1992| doi-access = free

}}

=Graph algorithms=

| last1 = Grohe | first1 = Martin

| last2 = Neuen | first2 = Daniel

| arxiv = 2011.01366

| contribution = Recent advances on the graph isomorphism problem

| date = June 2021

| doi = 10.1017/9781009036214.006

| pages = 187–234

| publisher = Cambridge University Press

| title = Surveys in Combinatorics 2021| s2cid = 226237505

}}

| last = Karpinski | first = Marek

| editor1-last = Diks | editor1-first = Krzysztof

| editor2-last = Rytter | editor2-first = Wojciech

| contribution = Approximability of the minimum bisection problem: an algorithmic challenge

| doi = 10.1007/3-540-45687-2_4

| pages = 59–67

| publisher = Springer

| series = Lecture Notes in Computer Science

| title = Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science 2002, 27th International Symposium, MFCS 2002, Warsaw, Poland, August 26-30, 2002, Proceedings

| volume = 2420

| year = 2002}}

| last = Gallian | first = Joseph A.

| date = December 17, 2021

| journal = Electronic Journal of Combinatorics

| mr = 1668059

| page = Dynamic Survey 6

| title = A dynamic survey of graph labeling

| url = https://www.combinatorics.org/Surveys/index.html

| volume = 5}}

  • Recognizing leaf powers and {{mvar|k}}-leaf powers{{cite journal

| last1 = Nishimura | first1 = N.

| last2 = Ragde | first2 = P.

| last3 = Thilikos | first3 = D.M.

| journal = Journal of Algorithms

| pages = 69–108

| title = On graph powers for leaf-labeled trees

| volume = 42

| year = 2002 | doi=10.1006/jagm.2001.1195}}.

| last1 = Fellows | first1 = Michael R. | author1-link = Michael Fellows

| last2 = Rosamond | first2 = Frances A. | author2-link = Frances A. Rosamond

| last3 = Rotics | first3 = Udi

| last4 = Szeider | first4 = Stefan | author4-link = Stefan Szeider

| doi = 10.1137/070687256

| issue = 2

| journal = SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics

| mr = 2519936

| pages = 909–939

| title = Clique-width is NP-complete

| volume = 23

| year = 2009}}.

| last1 = Gassner | first1 = Elisabeth

| last2 = Jünger | first2 = Michael

| last3 = Percan | first3 = Merijam

| last4 = Schaefer | first4 = Marcus

| last5 = Schulz | first5 = Michael

| contribution = Simultaneous graph embeddings with fixed edges

| doi = 10.1007/11917496_29

| mr = 2290741

| pages = 325–335

| publisher = Springer | location = Berlin

| series = Lecture Notes in Computer Science

| title = Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science: 32nd International Workshop, WG 2006, Bergen, Norway, June 22-24, 2006, Revised Papers

| volume = 4271

| year = 2006| url = http://e-archive.informatik.uni-koeln.de/507/2/zaik2006-507.pdf

}}.

=Miscellaneous=

| last1 = Papadimitriou | first1 = Christos H. | author1-link = Christos Papadimitriou

| last2 = Yannakakis | first2 = Mihalis | author2-link = Mihalis Yannakakis

| doi = 10.1006/jcss.1996.0058

| issue = 2, part 1

| journal = Journal of Computer and System Sciences

| mr = 1418886

| pages = 161–170

| title = On limited nondeterminism and the complexity of the V-C dimension

| volume = 53

| year = 1996| doi-access = free

}}

References

{{Reflist|30em}}