Proof of `The acceptance problem reduces to the Post correspondence problem`
What this proof establishes
no assumptions
Assuming the claims on the left, the claim on the right holds — checked by the archive's pipeline. Proof code is not displayed here.
Description
Sipser's Theorem 5.15 as a many-one reduction: a decision procedure for the Post correspondence problem over decides the acceptance problem for Turing machines.
Proof strategy
The source builds Sipser's instance over the alphabet of configurations, proves that its matches are exactly the accepting computation histories (, through the modified problem and the trick, and ), and that the construction is primitive recursive (); is the reduction. The concept states both problems over : the bridge moves the given decision procedure from to along the injective encoding of , which preserves and reflects matches (), and the resulting procedure for the source's machines to the concept's ().
Attribution
Sipser, Theorem 5.15 (Section 5.2); Lean proof by Aristotle ().