Weak computability and representation of reals

Abstract

AbstractThe computability of reals was introduced by Alan Turing [20] by means of decimal representations. But the equivalent notion can also be introduced accordingly if the binary expansion, Dedekind cut or Cauchy sequence representations are considered instead. In other words, the computability of reals is independent of their representations. However, as it is shown by Specker [19] and Ko [9], the primitive recursiveness and polynomial time computability of the reals do depend on the representation. In this paper, we explore how the weak computability of reals depends on the representation. To this end, we introduce three notions of weak computability in a way similar to the Ershov's hierarchy of Δ02‐sets of natural numbers based on the binary expansion, Dedekind cut and Cauchy sequence, respectively. This leads to a series of classes of reals with different levels of computability. We investigate systematically questions as on which level these notions are equivalent. We also compare them with other known classes of reals like c. e. and d‐c. e. reals. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)