[Math] Complete problems for randomized complexity classes

computational complexitycomputer science

It is believed that $BPP$ has no complete problems. Even for $BPP^O$ for a suitable oracle $O$ it is believed not to have complete problems, unless P=BPP. I wonder if the class MA (the randomized version of NP) has complete problems. For example, IP has complete problems (given that it is equal to PSPACE). There is a similar post asking about complexity classes with no complete problems. Here, I'm interested specifically on complete problems for MA. If the answer is positive, can you give some examples? I've tried google and the complexity zoo, but with no success.

Best Answer

In general, for randomized classes complete problems tend to be either promise problems or approximation problems (which means they don't technically satisfy the conditions for being complete problems).

If you allow approximation problems, you can get complete problems in BPP. For example, for BPP you can ask: given a Turing machine $M$, approximate the probability that it accepts within $t$ steps on input $x$, where $t$ is polynomial in the size of the input. It's clear that you can approximate this probability with a BPP machine (using simulation), and it's also obvious that any BPP language can be reduced to this problem. Technically, this problem isn't in BPP since it's not a language (i.e., its output is not $\{0,1\}$), so it's not BPP-complete.

You can turn this into a promise problem by imposing the "promise" that the acceptance probability either be greater than $\frac{2}{3}$ or less than $\frac{1}{3}$.

These complete promise problems or approximation problems play the same role that complete problems play for non-randomized languages, and they really deserve more respect from computer scientists. For quantum computing, the natural complete problems also tend to be approximation (or promise) problems, and they have been quite useful in the theory of quantum computing.

There is a natural promise problem from quantum computing (stoquastic Hamiltonian) which is MA-complete (and not trivially so). However, I don't believe there are any languages (non-promise problems with $\{0,1\}$ answers) known to be MA-complete.

Related Question