A Complete Proof System for 1-Free Regular Expressions Modulo Bisimilarity

Robin Milner (1984) gave a sound proof system for bisimilarity of regular expressions interpreted as processes: Basic Process Algebra with unary Kleene star iteration, deadlock 0, successful termination 1, and a fixed-point rule. He asked whether this system is complete. Despite intensive research over the last 35 years, the problem is still open. This paper gives a partial positive answer to Milner's problem. We prove that the adaptation of Milner's system over the subclass of regular expressions that arises by dropping the constant 1, and by changing to binary Kleene star iteration is complete. The crucial tool we use is a graph structure property that guarantees expressibility of a process graph by a regular expression, and is preserved by going over from a process graph to its bisimulation collapse

An Equational Axiomatization of Bisimulation over Regular Expressions

We provide a finite equational axiomatization for bisimulation equivalence of nondeterministic interpretation of regular expressions. Our axiomatization is heavily based on the one by Salomaa, that provided an implicative axiomatization for a large subset of regular expressions, namely all those that satisfy the non‐empty word property (i.e. without 1 summands at the top level) in *‐contexts. Our restriction is similar, it essentially amounts to recursively requiring that the non‐empty word property be satisfied not just at top level but at any depth. We also discuss the impact on the axiomatization of different interpretations of the 0 term, interpreted either as a null process or as a deadlock