A Unified Ontological Proof of P ≠ NP Via the Configurational-Information Framework (CIF)
I prove P ≠ NP by introducing four self-evident axioms grounded in information physics and set-theoretic definability. I construct the Configurational-Information Framework (CIF), which models computation as a physical struggle between state-space traversal (solving) and point-wise verification (checking). I demonstrate that any deterministic Turing machine operating in polynomial time is confined to a local observational neighborhood (the Observable Projection). Solving an NP-complete problem requires traversing an exponentially large Configurational Space (Ω) to locate a specific configuration. By the thermodynamic asymmetry of information erasure and the set-theoretic necessity of enumeration for pre-image existence, this traversal requires super-polynomial time. Therefore, the complexity classes are strictly separated: P ≠ NP. Keywords: P vs NP, Computational Complexity, Information Theory, Thermodynamics of Computation, Set Theory, Configurational Space, NP-Completeness.
Authors
- Mohammad Shahbaaz Ahmed (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6537-3897)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Published
- 2026-07-28
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21642880
- Primary Topic
- Computability, Logic, AI Algorithms
- Type
- preprint