Strengths and Weaknesses of LH Arithmetic

In this paper we provide a new arithmetic characterization of the levels of the og‐time hierarchy (LH). We define arithmetic classes and that correspond to ‐LOGTIME and ‐LOGTIME, respectively. We break and into natural hierarchies of subclasses and . We then define bounded arithmetic deduction systems ′ whose ‐definable functions are precisely B( ‐LOGTIME). We show these theories are quite strong in that (1) LIOpen proves for any fixed m that , (2) TAC, a theory that is slightly stronger than ′ whose (LH)‐definable functions are LH, proves LH is not equal to ‐TIME(s) for any m> 0, where 2^s ∈L, s(n) ∈ ω(log n), and (3) TAC proves LH ≠ for all k and m. We then show that the theory TAC cannot prove the collapse of the polynomial hierarchy. Thus any such proof, if it exists, must be argued in a stronger systems than ours.