Immunity and Simplicity for Exact Counting and Other Counting Classes
Jörg Rothe · RAIRO - Theoretical Informatics and Applications · 1999
Ko [26] and Bruschi [11] independently showed that, in some relativized world, PSPACE (in fact, ⊕P) contains a set that is immune to the polynomial hierarchy (PH). In this paper, we study and settle the question of relativized separations with immunity for PH and the counting classes PP, , and ⊕P in all possible pairwise combinations. Our main result is that there is an oracle A relative to which contains a set that is immune BPP⊕P. In particular, this set is immune to PHA and to ⊕PA. Strengthening results of Torán [48] and Green [18], we also show that, in suitable relativizations, NP contains a -immune set, and ⊕P contains a PPPH-immune set. This implies the existence of a -simple set for some oracle B, which extends results of Balcázar et al. [2,4]. Our proof technique requires a circuit lower bound for “exact counting” that is derived from Razborov's [35] circuit lower bound for majority.