Probabilistic checking of proofs: a new characterization of NP

  • Authors:
  • Sanjeev Arora;Shmuel Safra

  • Affiliations:
  • Princeton Univ., Princeton, NJ;Tel-Aviv Univ., Tel-Aviv, Israel

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the ACM (JACM)
  • Year:
  • 1998

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.03

Visualization

Abstract

We give a new characterization of NP: the class NP contains exactly those languages L for which membership proofs (a proof that an input x is in L) can be verified probabilistically in polynomial time using logarithmic number of random bits and by reading sublogarithmic number of bits from the proof.We discuss implications of this characterization; specifically, we show that approximating Clique and Independent Set, even in a very weak sense, is NP-hard.