Robustness of Equations Under Operational Extensions

Sound behavioral equations on open terms may become unsound after conservative extensions of the underlying operational semantics. Providing criteria under which such equations are preserved is extremely useful; in particular, it can avoid the need to repeat proofs when extending the specified language. This paper investigates preservation of sound equations for several notions of bisimilarity on open terms: closed-instance (ci-)bisimilarity and formal-hypothesis (fh-)bisimilarity, both due to Robert de Simone, and hypothesis-preserving (hp-)bisimilarity, due to Arend Rensink. For both fh-bisimilarity and hp-bisimilarity, we prove that arbitrary sound equations on open terms are preserved by all disjoint extensions which do not add labels. We also define slight variations of fh- and hp-bisimilarity such that all sound equations are preserved by arbitrary disjoint extensions. Finally, we give two sets of syntactic criteria (on equations, resp. operational extensions) and prove each of them to be sufficient for preserving ci-bisimilarity.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS'10, arXiv:1011.601

Bisimilarity of Open Terms in Stream GSOS

Stream GSOS is a specification format for operations and calculi on infinite sequences. The notion of bisimilarity provides a canonical proof technique for equivalence of closed terms in such specifications. In this paper, we focus on open terms, which may contain variables, and which are equivalent whenever they denote the same stream for every possible instantiation of the variables. Our main contribution is to capture equivalence of open terms as bisimilarity on certain Mealy machines, providing a concrete proof technique. Moreover, we introduce an enhancement of this technique, called bisimulation up-to substitutions, and show how to combine it with other up-to techniques to obtain a powerful method for proving equivalence of open terms

Bisimilarity of Open Terms

The standard way of lifting a binary relation, R, from closed terms of an algebra to open terms is to define its closed-instance extension, R_{ci}, which holds for a given pair of open terms if and only if R holds for all their closed instantiations. In this paper, we study alternatives for the case of (strong) bisimulation: we define semantic models for open terms, so-called conditional transition systems, and define bisimulation directly on those models. It turns out that this can be done in at least two different ways, giving rise to formal hypothesis bisimulation \sim_{fh} (due to De Simone) and hypothesis-preserving bisimilarity \sim_{hp}. For open terms, we have (strict) inclusions \sim_{fh} \subset \sim_{hp} \subset \sim_{ci}; for closed terms, the three relations coincide. We show that each of these relations is a congruence in the usual sense, and we give an alternative characterisation of \sim_{hp} in terms of non-conditional transitions. Finally, we study the issue of recursive congruence: we give general theorems for the congruence of each of the above variants with respect to the recursion combinator, where, however, the results we achieve for \sim_{fh} and \sim_{hp} hold in a more general setting than the one for \sim_{ci}.\u

Normal Form Bisimulations By Value

Normal form bisimilarities are a natural form of program equivalence resting on open terms, first introduced by Sangiorgi in call-by-name. The literature contains a normal form bisimilarity for Plotkin's call-by-value $\lambda$-calculus, Lassen's \emph{enf bisimilarity}, which validates all of Moggi's monadic laws and can be extended to validate $\eta$. It does not validate, however, other relevant principles, such as the identification of meaningless terms -- validated instead by Sangiorgi's bisimilarity -- or the commutation of \letexps. These shortcomings are due to issues with open terms of Plotkin's calculus. We introduce a new call-by-value normal form bisimilarity, deemed \emph{net bisimilarity}, closer in spirit to Sangiorgi's and satisfying the additional principles. We develop it on top of an existing formalism designed for dealing with open terms in call-by-value. It turns out that enf and net bisimilarities are \emph{incomparable}, as net bisimilarity does not validate Moggi's laws nor $\eta$. Moreover, there is no easy way to merge them. To better understand the situation, we provide an analysis of the rich range of possible call-by-value normal form bisimilarities, relating them to Ehrhard's relational model.Comment: Rewritten version (deleted toy similarity and explained proof method on naive similarity) -- Submitted to POPL2

Bisimilarity congruences for open terms and term graphs via tile logic

The definition of sos formats ensuring that bisimilarity on closed terms is a congruence has received much attention in the last two decades. For dealing with open terms, the congruence is usually lifted from closed terms by instantiating the free variables in all possible ways; the only alternatives considered in the literature are Larsen and Xinxin’s context systems and Rensink’s conditional transition systems. We propose an approach based on tile logic, where closed and open terms are managed uniformly, and study the ‘bisimilarity as congruence’ property for several tile formats, accomplishing different concepts of open system

History-Preserving Bisimilarity for Higher-Dimensional Automata via Open Maps

We show that history-preserving bisimilarity for higher-dimensional automata has a simple characterization directly in terms of higher-dimensional transitions. This implies that it is decidable for finite higher-dimensional automata. To arrive at our characterization, we apply the open-maps framework of Joyal, Nielsen and Winskel in the category of unfoldings of precubical sets.Comment: Minor updates in accordance with reviewer comments. Submitted to MFPS 201

On Observing Dynamic Prioritised Actions in SOC

We study the impact on observational semantics for SOC of priority mechanisms which combine dynamic priority with local pre-emption. We define manageable notions of strong and weak labelled bisimilarities for COWS, a process calculus for SOC, and provide alternative characterisations in terms of open barbed bisimilarities. These semantics show that COWS’s priority mechanisms partially recover the capability to observe receive actions (that could not be observed in a purely asynchronous setting) and that high priority primitives for termination impose specific conditions on the bisimilarities

A Distribution Law for CCS and a New Congruence Result for the pi-calculus

We give an axiomatisation of strong bisimilarity on a small fragment of CCS that does not feature the sum operator. This axiomatisation is then used to derive congruence of strong bisimilarity in the finite pi-calculus in absence of sum. To our knowledge, this is the only nontrivial subcalculus of the pi-calculus that includes the full output prefix and for which strong bisimilarity is a congruence.Comment: 20 page

Homotopy Bisimilarity for Higher-Dimensional Automata

We introduce a new category of higher-dimensional automata in which the morphisms are functional homotopy simulations, i.e. functional simulations up to concurrency of independent events. For this, we use unfoldings of higher-dimensional automata into higher-dimensional trees. Using a notion of open maps in this category, we define homotopy bisimilarity. We show that homotopy bisimilarity is equivalent to a straight-forward generalization of standard bisimilarity to higher dimensions, and that it is finer than split bisimilarity and incomparable with history-preserving bisimilarity.Comment: Heavily revised version of arXiv:1209.492

A Characterisation of Open Bisimilarity using an Intuitionistic Modal Logic

Open bisimilarity is defined for open process terms in which free variables may appear. The insight is, in order to characterise open bisimilarity, we move to the setting of intuitionistic modal logics. The intuitionistic modal logic introduced, called $\mathcal{OM}$, is such that modalities are closed under substitutions, which induces a property known as intuitionistic hereditary. Intuitionistic hereditary reflects in logic the lazy instantiation of free variables performed when checking open bisimilarity. The soundness proof for open bisimilarity with respect to our intuitionistic modal logic is mechanised in Abella. The constructive content of the completeness proof provides an algorithm for generating distinguishing formulae, which we have implemented. We draw attention to the fact that there is a spectrum of bisimilarity congruences that can be characterised by intuitionistic modal logics