Universal Profinite Domains

Abstract

. We introduce a bicartesian closed category of what we call profinite domains. Study of these domains is carried out through the use of an equivalent category of pre-orders in a manner similar to the information systems approach advocated by Dana Scott and others. A class of universal profinite domains is defined and used to derive sufficient conditions for the profinite solution of domain equations involving continuous operators. As a special instance of this construction, a universal domain for the category SFP is demonstrated. Necessary conditions for the existence of solutions for domain equations over the profinites are also given and used to derive results about solutions of some equations. A new universal bounded complete domain is also demonstrated using an operator which has bounded complete domains as its fixed points. 1 Introduction. For our purposes a domain equation has the form X ¸ = F (X) where F is an operator on a class of semantic domains (typically, F is an endof..