Higher-order interpretations and program complexity

Polynomial interpretations and their generalizations like quasi-interpretations have been used in the setting of first-order functional languages to design criteria ensuring statically some complexity bounds on programs [10]. This fits in the area of implicit computational complexity, which aims at giving machine-free characterizations of complexity classes. In this paper, we extend this approach to the higher-order setting. For that we consider simply-typed term rewriting systems [35], we define higher-order polynomial interpretations for them, and we give a criterion ensuring that a program can be executed in polynomial time. In order to obtain a criterion flexible enough to validate interesting programs using higher-order primitives, we introduce a notion of polynomial quasi-interpretations, coupled with a simple termination criterion based on linear types and path-like orders.