Efficient solutions to hard computational problems by P systems with symport/antiport rules and membrane division

P systems are computing models inspired by some basic features of biological membranes. In this work, membrane division, which provides a way to obtain an exponential workspace in linear time, is introduced into (cell-like) P systems with communication (symport/antiport) rules, where objects are never modified but they just change their places. The computational efficiency of this kind of P systems is studied. Specifically, we present a (uniform) linear time solution to the NP-complete problem, Subset Sum by using division rules for elementary membranes and communication rules of length at most 3. We further prove that such P system allowing division rules for non-elementary membranes can efficiently solve the PSPACE-complete problem, QSAT in a uniform way.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012-3743