On Nondeterminism, Enumeration Reducibility and Polynomial Bounds

Enumeration reducibility is a notion of relative computability between sets of natural numbers where only positive information about the sets is used or produced. Extending e-reducibility to partial functions characterises relative computability between partial functions. We define a polynomial time enumeration reducibility that retains the character of enumeration reducibility and show that it is equivalent to conjunctive non-deterministic polynomial time reducibility. We define the polynomial time e-degrees as the equivalence classes under this reducibility and investigate their structure on the recursive sets, showing in particular that the pe-degrees of the computable sets are dense and do not form a lattice, but that minimal pairs exist. We define a jump operator and use it to produce a characterisation of the polynomial hierarchy.