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Paper:

TR25-142 | 4th October 2025 20:11

Upper and Lower Bounds for the Linear Ordering Principle

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Abstract:

Korten and Pitassi (FOCS, 2024) defined a new complexity class $L_2P$ as the polynomial-time Turing closure of the Linear Ordering Principle. They put it between $MA$ (Merlin--Arthur protocols) and $S_2P$ (the second symmetric level of the polynomial hierarchy).

In this paper we sandwich $L_2P$ between $P^{prMA}$ and $P^{prSBP}$. (The oracles here are promise problems, and $SBP$ is the only known class between $MA$ and $AM$.) The containment in $P^{prSBP}$ is proved via an iterative process that uses a $prSBP$ oracle to estimate the average order rank of a subset and find the minimum of a linear order.

Another containment result of this paper is $P^{prO_2P} \subseteq O_2P$ (where $O_2P$ is the input-oblivious version of $S_2P$). These containment results altogether have several byproducts:

We give an affirmative answer to an open question posed by of Chakaravarthy and Roy (Computational Complexity, 2011) whether $P^{prMA} \subseteq S_2P$, thereby settling the relative standing of the existing (non-oblivious) Karp-Lipton-style collapse results of Chakaravarthy and Roy (2011) and Cai (2007),

We give an affirmative answer to an open question of Korten and Pitassi whether a Karp-Lipton-style collapse can be proven for $L_2P$,

We show that the Karp-Lipton-style collapse to $P^{prOMA}$ is actually better than both known collapses to $P^{prMA}$ due to Chakaravarthy and Roy (Computational Complexity, 2011) and to $O_2P$ also due to Chakaravarthy and Roy (STACS, 2006). Thus we resolve the controversy between previously incomparable Karp-Lipton collapses stemming from these two lines of research.



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