Classical Complexity Classes

lax-434930·formalized by Édouard Bonnet · Codex 5.6 and 6·registered·created ·GitHub @0c08403·Lean v4.33.0 epoch · mathlib db584cd6d46c

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    Abstract

    We formalize the classical complexity classes L\mathrm{L}, NL\mathrm{NL}, P\mathrm{P}, NP\mathrm{NP}, coNL\mathrm{coNL}, coNP\mathrm{coNP}, PSPACE\mathrm{PSPACE}, NPSPACE\mathrm{NPSPACE}, and EXPTIME\mathrm{EXPTIME} for languages of finite binary strings. P uses deterministic stack machines, identity encoding of binary inputs, and singleton Boolean outputs. NP uses polynomially bounded certificates and polynomial-time verification. We prove equivalence with finite single-tape machines and closure under complement. EXPTIME uses these single-tape machines. The space classes use finite Turing machines with a bounded, read-only input tape and a separate work tape, whose space is bounded on every computation branch. We prove the full chain through L⊆NL\mathrm{L}\subseteq\mathrm{NL}, NL⊆P\mathrm{NL}\subseteq\mathrm P, P⊆NP\mathrm{P}\subseteq\mathrm{NP}, NP⊆PSPACE\mathrm{NP}\subseteq\mathrm{PSPACE}, PSPACE=NPSPACE\mathrm{PSPACE}=\mathrm{NPSPACE} (Savitch's theorem), and NPSPACE⊆EXPTIME\mathrm{NPSPACE}\subseteq\mathrm{EXPTIME}. We also state P≠NP\mathrm{P}\ne\mathrm{NP} as an open question.

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    5 pages · 40 marked passages

    In the paper

    • page 1 of the paper of lax-345332, NP-Hardness of (3,4)-SAT and [2,3]-Bounded 3-SAT
    • page 6 of the paper of lax-391470, Scheduling with Two Non-Unit Job Lengths Is NP-Complete

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    Cite this

    This is only the formalizers. The authors of the formalized results may be different (see References).

    @misc{lax-434930,
      author = {Édouard Bonnet and Codex 5.6 and 6},
      title = {Classical Complexity Classes},
      year = {2026},
      howpublished = {Lax Archive, lax-434930},
      url = {https://laxarchive.org/lax-434930/},
    }

    References

    1. Jonathan Katz. Notes on Complexity Theory: Lecture 1. 2005. cs.umd.edu/~jkatz/complexity/f05/lecture1.pdf

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