The Busy Beaver Function

Arthur Freitas Ramos 📧, David Barros Hulak and Ruy Jose Guerra Barretto de Queiroz

June 1, 2026

Abstract

This development formalizes the Busy Beaver upper-bound principle and its computability consequences for AFP Turing machines. The abstract layer works over machine models with finite size classes and unique exact halting times: it defines the time Busy Beaver function and proves that any total upper bound for this function decides zero-input halting. A generic computability interface then yields the usual noncomputability consequence from the absence of computable fixed-input halting deciders; its eventual-domination theorem is proved under an explicit compilation-witness assumption. The development then connects the abstract theory to AFP's Universal Turing Machine formalization by defining exact numeric-result halting times, a finite size measure for Turing programs, a concrete Turing-machine Busy Beaver function, a code-indexed Busy Beaver function whose upper bounds decide AFP's special halting problem (K_1), and a strengthened program/input-pair Busy Beaver function whose upper bounds decide AFP's two-argument halting problem (H_1). Using AFP's Turing-computability interface, it further proves that no upper-bound-induced (H_1) decider set has a Turing-computable total characteristic function, with a specialization to the decider induced by the concrete pair-indexed Busy Beaver function itself.

License

BSD License

Note

Copilot with Gpt 5.5 on xhigh was used to help with proof engineering.

Topics

Session Busy_Beaver