Diophantine complexity

In the 1930's Gode1 together with Church, K1eene, and Turing established a relationship between computation and elementary number theory. Using techniques developed by Robinson, Putnam, Davis4 and Matijasevic7 in th~ir celebrated solution to Hilbert's 10th problem, we began in [2] a detai led analysis to determine what consequences this relationship might have for computational complexity. We found that there were consequences not only for computational complexity (nontrivial lower bounds on decision procedures for polynomials, the polynomial compression theorem) but also for number theory (new polynomial definitions of prima1ity and exponentiation) and logic (a syntactical characterization of the elementary-computable functions).