Axiomatizing Resource Bounds for Measure

Resource-bounded measure is a generalization of classical Lebesgue measure that is useful in computational complexity. The central parameter of resource-bounded measure is the resource bound ∆, which is a class of functions. When ∆ is unrestricted, i.e., contains all functions with the specified domains and codomains, resource-bounded measure coincides with classical Lebesgue measure. On the other hand, when ∆ contains functions satisfying some complexity constraint, resource-bounded measure imposes internal measure structure on a corresponding complexity class. Most applications of resource-bounded measure use only the “measure-zero/measure-one fragment” of the theory. For this fragment, ∆ can be taken to be a class of type-one functions (e.g., from strings to rationals). However, in the full theory of resource-bounded measurability and measure, the resource bound ∆ also contains type-two functionals. To date, both the full theory and its zero-one fragment have been developed in terms of a list of example resource bounds chosen for their apparent utility. This paper replaces this list-of-examples approach with a careful investigation of the conditions that suffice for a class ∆ to be a resource bound. Our main theorem says that every class ∆ that has the closure properties of Mehlhorn’s basic feasible functionals is a resource bound for measure. We also prove that the type-2 versions of the time and space hierarchies that have been extensively used in resource-bounded measure have these closure properties. In the course of doing this, we prove theorems establishing that these time and space resource bounds are all robust.