Unambiguous Computation: Boolean Hierarchies and Sparse Turing-Complete Sets

Abstract

It is known that for any class C closed under union and intersection, the Boolean closure of C, the Boolean hierarchy over C, and the symmetric difference hierarchy over C all are equal. We prove that these equalities hold for any complexity class closed under intersection; in particular, they thus hold for unambiguous polynomial time (UP). In contrast to the NP case, we prove that the Hausdorff hierarchy and the nested difference hierarchy over UP both fail to capture the Boolean closure of UP in some relativized worlds. Karp and Lipton proved that if nondeterministic polynomial time has sparse Turing-complete sets, then the polynomial hierarchy collapses. We establish the first consequences from the assumption that unambiguous polynomial time has sparse Turing-complete sets: (a) UP is in Low_2, where Low_2 is the second level of the low hierarchy, and (b) each level of the unambiguous polynomial hierarchy is contained one level lower in the promise unambiguous polynomial hierarchy than is otherwise known to be the case.