Jan Krajícek - Böcker

This book principally concerns the rapidly growing area of what might be termed "Logical Complexity Theory", the study of bounded arithmetic, propositional proof systems, length of proof, etc and relations to computational complexity theory. Issuing from a two-year NSF and Czech Academy of Sciences grant supporting a month-long workshop and 3-day conference in San Diego (1990) and Prague (1991), the book contains refereed articles concerning the existence of the most general unifier, a special case of Kreisel's conjecture on length-of-proof, propositional logic proof size, a new alternating logtime algorithm for boolean formula evaluation and relation to branching programs, interpretability between fragments of arithmetic, feasible interpretability, provability logic, open induction, Herbrand-type theorems, isomorphism between first and second order bounded arithmetics, forcing techniques in bounded arithmetic, ordinal arithmetic in Λ Δ o . Also included is an extended abstract of J P Ressayre's new approach concerning the model completeness of the theory of real closed expotential fields. Additional features of the book include (1) the transcription and translation of a recently discovered 1956 letter from K Godel to J von Neumann, asking about a polynomial time algorithm for the proof in k-symbols of predicate calculus formulas (equivalent to the P-NP question), (2) an OPEN PROBLEM LIST consisting of 7 fundamental and 39 technical questions contributed by many researchers, together with a bibliography of relevant references.

This book presents an up-to-date, unified treatment of research in bounded arithmetic and complexity of propositional logic, with emphasis on independence proofs and lower bound proofs. The author discusses the deep connections between logic and complexity theory and lists a number of intriguing open problems. An introduction to the basics of logic and complexity theory is followed by discussion of important results in propositional proof systems and systems of bounded arithmetic. More advanced topics are then treated, including polynomial simulations and conservativity results, various witnessing theorems, the translation of bounded formulas (and their proofs) into propositional ones, the method of random partial restrictions and its applications, direct independence proofs, complete systems of partial relations, lower bounds to the size of constant-depth propositional proofs, the method of Boolean valuations, the issue of hard tautologies and optimal proof systems, combinatorics and complexity theory within bounded arithmetic, and relations to complexity issues of predicate calculus. Students and researchers in mathematical logic and complexity theory will find this comprehensive treatment an excellent guide to this expanding interdisciplinary area.

A compilation of papers presented at the 2001 European Summer Meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, Logic Colloquium '01 includes surveys and research articles from some of the world's preeminent logicians. Two long articles are based on tutorials given at the meeting and present accessible expositions of research in two active areas of logic, geometric model theory and descriptive set theory of group actions. The remaining articles cover seperate research topics in many areas of mathematical logic, including applications in Computer Science, Proof Theory, Set Theory, Model Theory, Computability Theory, and aspects of Philosophy. This collection will be of interest not only to specialists in mathematical logic, but also to philosophical logicians, historians of logic, computer scientists, formal linguists and mathematicians in the areas of algebra, abstract analysis and topology. A number of the articles are aimed at non-specialists and serve as good introductions for graduate students.