Fagin's Theorem for Semiring Turing Machines

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Badia, Guillermo, Droste, Manfred, Eiter, Thomas, Kiesel, Rafael, Noguera, Carles, Paul, Erik
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Badia, Guillermo
Droste, Manfred
Eiter, Thomas
Kiesel, Rafael
Noguera, Carles
Paul, Erik
author_facet Badia, Guillermo
Droste, Manfred
Eiter, Thomas
Kiesel, Rafael
Noguera, Carles
Paul, Erik
contents In recent years, quantitative complexity over semirings has been intensively investigated. In this context, Eiter and Kiesel (Semiring Reasoning Frameworks in AI and Their Computational Complexity, J. Artif. Intell. Res., 2023) introduced non-deterministic Turing Machines with semiring-weighted transitions (SRTMs) to capture the complexity of a manifold of semiring frameworks. Beyond computational complexity, they posed the question of how we can relate the computational power of SRTMs to logical expressiveness. While this question was partially addressed for a more limited machine model by Badia et al.\ (Logical characterizations of weighted complexity classes, MFCS, 2024), the full question remained open. To answer it, we present an improved version of Eiter and Kiesel's SRTM model of computation. First and foremost, this enables us to prove a Fagin Theorem for the SRTM model, i.e., we show that the quantitative complexity class $\text{NP}_\infty(R)$, which comprises non-deterministic polynomial time computability in the improved SRTM model over a commutative semiring $R$, is captured by a version of weighted existential second-order logic that allows for predicates interpreted as semiring-annotated relations over $R$. Furthermore, we argue that the new SRTM model is preferable over the original one and show that it reclaims some important results from Eiter and Kiesel (2023) that were flawed with respect to the latter.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_18375
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fagin's Theorem for Semiring Turing Machines
Badia, Guillermo
Droste, Manfred
Eiter, Thomas
Kiesel, Rafael
Noguera, Carles
Paul, Erik
Computational Complexity
Logic in Computer Science
In recent years, quantitative complexity over semirings has been intensively investigated. In this context, Eiter and Kiesel (Semiring Reasoning Frameworks in AI and Their Computational Complexity, J. Artif. Intell. Res., 2023) introduced non-deterministic Turing Machines with semiring-weighted transitions (SRTMs) to capture the complexity of a manifold of semiring frameworks. Beyond computational complexity, they posed the question of how we can relate the computational power of SRTMs to logical expressiveness. While this question was partially addressed for a more limited machine model by Badia et al.\ (Logical characterizations of weighted complexity classes, MFCS, 2024), the full question remained open. To answer it, we present an improved version of Eiter and Kiesel's SRTM model of computation. First and foremost, this enables us to prove a Fagin Theorem for the SRTM model, i.e., we show that the quantitative complexity class $\text{NP}_\infty(R)$, which comprises non-deterministic polynomial time computability in the improved SRTM model over a commutative semiring $R$, is captured by a version of weighted existential second-order logic that allows for predicates interpreted as semiring-annotated relations over $R$. Furthermore, we argue that the new SRTM model is preferable over the original one and show that it reclaims some important results from Eiter and Kiesel (2023) that were flawed with respect to the latter.
title Fagin's Theorem for Semiring Turing Machines
topic Computational Complexity
Logic in Computer Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18375