TITLE: Does IP = PSPACE work over other rings?
QUESTION [7 upvotes]: Background: It is possible (see e.g., this) to define a Turing machine over an arbitrary ring.  It reduces to the classical notion when the ring is $\mathbb{Z}_2$; the key difference is that elementary algebraic computations are allowed to be performed in one step (and one has infinite precision).  It is possible to define analogs of classical complexity classes (e.g. $\mathrm{P}_R, \mathrm{NP}_R, \mathrm{BPP}_R$, etc. with respect to a ring $R$).  Sometimes the ring may be required to be ordered, and the machine is allowed to test for ordering (it is always allowed to test for equality).
It should, therefore, be possible to define a class $\mathrm{IP}_R$ of problems that can be solved by a polynomial-time interactive proof system over $R$ with error probability $\leq \frac{1}{3}$, a class $\mathrm{PSPACE}_R$ of problems that can be solved in polynomial space by a (deterministic) Turing machine.  (Probably this has already been done, but I just haven't been able to find it.) When $R = \mathbb{Z}_2$ (i.e. the classical case), it is a known result that $\mathrm{IP}=\mathrm{PSPACE}$.
Question: Does the same work over other rings $R$?
Perhaps there might be a problem, since the only proof I've seen (e.g. in Sipser's Introduction to the Theory of Computation) uses the $\mathrm{PSPACE}$-completeness of $TQBF$, and I don't know whether that would work over an arbitrary ring.

REPLY [2 votes]: This does not directly answer your question, but it is related to issues of relativizing IP and PSPACE.

For a random oracle A, IPA
  ≠ PSPACEA with
  probability 1.

The problems coincide relative to a random oracle with probability either 0 or 1 by Komolgorov's zero-one law. That they are distinct for almost all oracles was proved by Chang-Chor-Goldreich-Hartmanis-Håstad-Ranjan-Rohatgi in "The random oracle hypothesis is false." J. Comput. System Sci.  49  (1994) 1 24--39. Note however that if you pass from IP to IPP, where the error probability is only ≤ 1/2, you do have that IPPA = PSPACEA for a random oracle A, so these are subtle issues.