Andrej Dudenhefner - Constructive Many-one Reduction from the Halting Problem to Semi-unification (Extended Version)

lmcs:9977 - Logical Methods in Computer Science, December 8, 2023, Volume 19, Issue 4 - https://doi.org/10.46298/lmcs-19(4:22)2023
Constructive Many-one Reduction from the Halting Problem to Semi-unification (Extended Version)Article

Authors: Andrej Dudenhefner

    Semi-unification is the combination of first-order unification and first-order matching. The undecidability of semi-unification has been proven by Kfoury, Tiuryn, and Urzyczyn in the 1990s by Turing reduction from Turing machine immortality (existence of a diverging configuration). The particular Turing reduction is intricate, uses non-computational principles, and involves various intermediate models of computation. The present work gives a constructive many-one reduction from the Turing machine halting problem to semi-unification. This establishes RE-completeness of semi-unification under many-one reductions. Computability of the reduction function, constructivity of the argument, and correctness of the argument is witnessed by an axiom-free mechanization in the Coq proof assistant. Arguably, this serves as comprehensive, precise, and surveyable evidence for the result at hand. The mechanization is incorporated into the existing, well-maintained Coq library of undecidability proofs. Notably, a variant of Hooper's argument for the undecidability of Turing machine immortality is part of the mechanization.


    Volume: Volume 19, Issue 4
    Published on: December 8, 2023
    Accepted on: September 15, 2023
    Submitted on: August 30, 2022
    Keywords: Computer Science - Logic in Computer Science

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