Classification of Local Problems on Paths from the Perspective of Descriptive Combinatorics

Abstract: We classify which local problems with inputs on oriented paths have so-called Borel solution and show that this class of problems remains the same if we instead require a measurable solution, a factor of iid solution, or a solution with the property of Baire. Together with the work from the field of distributed computing [Balliu et al. PODC 2019], the work from the field of descriptive combinatorics [Gao et al. arXiv:1803.03872, Bernshteyn arXiv:2004.04905] and the work from the field of random processes [Holroyd et al. Annals of Prob. 2017, Greb\'ik, Rozho\v{n} arXiv:2103.08394], this finishes the classification of local problems with inputs on oriented paths using complexity classes from these three fields. A simple picture emerges: there are four classes of local problems and most classes have natural definitions in all three fields. Moreover, we now know that randomness does \emph{not} help with solving local problems on oriented paths.