P versus NP problem
The complexity class P is often seen as a mathematical abstraction modeling those computational tasks that admit an efficient algorithm. This hypothesis is called the Cobham–Edmonds thesis. The complexity class NP, on the other hand, contains many problems that people would like to solve efficiently, but for which no efficient algorithm is known, such as the Boolean satisfiability problem, the Hamiltonian path problem and the vertex cover problem. Since deterministic Turing machines are special nondeterministic Turing machines, it is easily observed that each problem in P is also member of the class NP.
The question of whether P equals NP is one of the most important open questions in theoretical computer science because of the wide implications of a solution. If the answer is yes, many important problems can be shown to have more efficient solutions. These include various types of integer programming problems in operations research, many problems in logistics, protein structure prediction in biology, and the ability to find formal proofs of pure mathematics theorems. The P versus NP problem is one of the Millennium Prize Problems proposed by the Clay Mathematics Institute. There is a US$1,000,000 prize for resolving the problem.
Problems in NP not known to be in P or NP-complete
It was shown by Ladner that if P ≠ NP then there exist problems in NP that are neither in P nor NP-complete. Such problems are called NP-intermediate problems. The graph isomorphism problem, the discrete logarithm problem and the integer factorization problem are examples of problems which are believed to be NP-intermediate. They are some of the very few problems not known to be in P or to be NP-complete.
The graph isomorphism problem is the computational problem of determining whether two finite graphs are isomorphic. An important unsolved problem in complexity theory is whether the graph isomorphism problem is in P, NP-complete, or NP-intermediate. The answer is not known, but it is believed that the problem is at least not NP-complete. If graph isomorphism is NP-complete, the polynomial time hierarchy collapses to its second level. Since it is widely believed that the polynomial hierarchy does not collapse to any finite level, it is believed that graph isomorphism in not NP-complete. The best algorithm for this problem, due to Laszlo Babai and Eugene Luks has run time 2O(√(n log n)) for graphs with n vertices.
The integer factorization problem is the computational problem of determining the prime factorization of a given integer. Phrased as a decision problem, it is the problem of deciding whether the input has a factor less than k. No efficient integer factorization algorithm is known, and this fact forms the basis of several modern cryptographic systems, such as the RSA algorithm. The integer factorization problem is in NP and in co-NP (and even in UP and co-UP). If the problem is NP-complete, the polynomial time hierarchy will collapse to its first level (i.e., NP will equal co-NP). The best known algorithm for integer factorization is the general number field sieve, which takes time O(e(64/9)1/3(n.log 2)1/3(log (n.log 2))2/3) to factor an n-bit integer. However, the best known quantum algorithm for this problem, Shor's algorithm, does run in polynomial time. Unfortunately, this fact doesn't say much about where the problem lies with respect to non-quantum complexity classes.
Separations between other complexity classes
Many known complexity classes are suspected to be unequal, but this has not been proved. For instance P ⊆ NP ⊆ PP ⊆ PSPACE, but it is possible that P = PSPACE. If P is not equal to NP, then P is not equal to PSPACE either. Since there are many known complexity classes between P and PSPACE, such as RP, BPP, PP, BQP, MA, PH, etc., it is possible that all these complexity classes collapse to one class. Proving that any of these classes are unequal would be a major breakthrough in complexity theory.
Along the same lines, co-NP is the class containing the complement problems (i.e. problems with the yes/no answers reversed) of NP problems. It is believed that NP is not equal to co-NP, however, it has not yet been proven. It has been shown that if these two complexity classes are not equal then P is not equal to NP.
Similarly, it is not known if L (the set of all problems that can be solved in logarithmic space) is strictly contained in P or equal to P. Again, there are many complexity classes between the two, such as NL and NC, and it is not known if they are distinct or equal classes.
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