On the Elementary Affine Lambda-Calculus with and Without Fixed Points

The elementary affine lambda-calculus was introduced as a polyvalent setting for implicit computational complexity, allowing for characterizations of polynomial time and hyperexponential time predicates. But these results rely on type fixpoints (a.k.a. recursive types), and it was unknown whether this feature of the type system was really necessary. We give a positive answer by showing that without type fixpoints, we get a characterization of regular languages instead of polynomial time. The proof uses the semantic evaluation method. We also propose an aesthetic improvement on the characterization of the function classes FP and k-FEXPTIME in the presence of recursive types.