Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2013 iii Paper 59 3 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-07
A circuit size class consists of languages whose length- indicator functions have Boolean circuits of size at most , for all sufficiently large , over a fixed finite bounded-fan-in complete basis. The notation allows a constant factor. Input-node counting conventions do not affect the polynomial and exponential bounds here.
The nonuniform class P/poly isThere is no requirement that a uniform algorithm construct the Boolean circuits. Equivalently, a polynomial-time machine can receive polynomial-length advice depending only on the input length, and the advice need not be computable.
Choose an undecidable set , for example the set in the halting problem of indices of machines that halt on empty input, and define . For each length , use a constant-zero Boolean circuit if , and an AND of all input bits if . These Boolean circuits have size and accept exactly . Thus undecidable unary languages with linear-size circuits belong to P/poly.
Every NP language is decidable by enumerating its finitely many polynomial-length certificate encodings and running the polynomial-time verifier. If were decidable, testing would decide , a contradiction. ThereforeThis separates the classes in the stated direction; it does not claim that NP is not contained in P/poly.