Renormalization and Computation II: Time Cut-off and the Halting Problem

This is the second installment to the project initiated in [Ma3]. In the first Part, I argued that both philosophy and technique of the perturbative renormalization in quantum field theory could be meaningfully transplanted to the theory of computation, and sketched several contexts supporting this view. In this second part, I address some of the issues raised in [Ma3] and provide their development in three contexts: a categorification of the algorithmic computations; time cut--off and Anytime Algorithms; and finally, a Hopf algebra renormalization of the Halting Problem.Comment: 28 page

A Survey on Continuous Time Computations

We provide an overview of theories of continuous time computation. These theories allow us to understand both the hardness of questions related to continuous time dynamical systems and the computational power of continuous time analog models. We survey the existing models, summarizing results, and point to relevant references in the literature

General Recursion via Coinductive Types

A fertile field of research in theoretical computer science investigates the representation of general recursive functions in intensional type theories. Among the most successful approaches are: the use of wellfounded relations, implementation of operational semantics, formalization of domain theory, and inductive definition of domain predicates. Here, a different solution is proposed: exploiting coinductive types to model infinite computations. To every type A we associate a type of partial elements Partial(A), coinductively generated by two constructors: the first, return(a) just returns an element a:A; the second, step(x), adds a computation step to a recursive element x:Partial(A). We show how this simple device is sufficient to formalize all recursive functions between two given types. It allows the definition of fixed points of finitary, that is, continuous, operators. We will compare this approach to different ones from the literature. Finally, we mention that the formalization, with appropriate structural maps, defines a strong monad.Comment: 28 page

A Proof of the S-m-n theorem in Coq

This report describes the implementation of a mechanisation of the theory of computation in the Coq proof assistant which leads to a proof of the Smn theorem. This mechanisation is based on a model of computation similar to the partial recursive function model and includes the definition of a computable function, proofs of the computability of a number of functions and the definition of an effective coding from the set of partial recursive functions to natural numbers. This work forms part of a comparative study of the HOL and Coq proof assistants

Inductive and Coinductive Components of Corecursive Functions in Coq

In Constructive Type Theory, recursive and corecursive definitions are subject to syntactic restrictions which guarantee termination for recursive functions and productivity for corecursive functions. However, many terminating and productive functions do not pass the syntactic tests. Bove proposed in her thesis an elegant reformulation of the method of accessibility predicates that widens the range of terminative recursive functions formalisable in Constructive Type Theory. In this paper, we pursue the same goal for productive corecursive functions. Notably, our method of formalisation of coinductive definitions of productive functions in Coq requires not only the use of ad-hoc predicates, but also a systematic algorithm that separates the inductive and coinductive parts of functions.Comment: Dans Coalgebraic Methods in Computer Science (2008

Extending the Calculus of Constructions with Tarski's fix-point theorem

We propose to use Tarski's least fixpoint theorem as a basis to define recursive functions in the calculus of inductive constructions. This widens the class of functions that can be modeled in type-theory based theorem proving tool to potentially non-terminating functions. This is only possible if we extend the logical framework by adding the axioms that correspond to classical logic. We claim that the extended framework makes it possible to reason about terminating and non-terminating computations and we show that common facilities of the calculus of inductive construction, like program extraction can be extended to also handle the new functions