Monodirectional P systems

Abstract

We investigate the influence that the flow of information in membrane has on their computational complexity. In particular, we analyse the behaviour of P with active membranes where communication only happens from a membrane towards its parent, and never in the opposite direction. We prove that these monodirectional P systems are, when working in polynomial time and under standard complexity-theoretic assumptions, much less powerful than unrestricted ones: indeed, they characterise classes of problems defined by polynomial-time Turing machines with $${\mathbf{NP}}$$NP oracles, rather than the whole class $${\mathbf{PSPACE}}$$PSPACE of problems solvable in polynomial space.